The beauty about the rental market in Los Angeles, at least for a subletter like myself, is that there is such a transient nature to the place. People come to Los Angeles to fulfill their dreams. When I arrived here two years ago from back east, I was struck at renters being so defensive about emphasizing that their property was only available for a year lease. After one property manager began to go into great detail about the terms of breaking his lease after less than five minutes of speaking with him, I stopped to ask him why everyone was so preoccupied with lease duration.

“People are flaky here,” he said.

After living here for a couple years, I can definitely understand the sentiment. Los Angeles can be a difficult place to navigate. And in a city centered around the ambition of the entertainment industry, an opportunity for fame and fortune is as likely as the reality that the person presenting that chance is simply taking advantage of you. Where the line is blurred between friendship and networking, and a lunch date might result in hours spent in sun-soaked gridlock, it is an easy place to find yourself feeling lost and unsupported. Add to that a high cost of living, a strong emphasis on the marketable image, and an extremely competitive job market, and many people find the challenges here are more than they care to bear.

But beyond the difficulties of living in LA, there is an equally hypnotizing charm about the place. Time seems to stand still here, blissfully stagnant with seemingly unchanging summer season. The siren call of sunshine highlights the allure of a town that seems to attract all things beautiful, natural and otherwise. In my short time here, I have seen many people live well beyond their means in the name of engaging that beauty.

My job as a renter, then, would be to make sure I selected someone who was responsible enough to engage the culture here without losing sight of the terms of our rental contract (or losing my keys). I planned on keeping some of my belongings in the place while I lived elsewhere, and I had a great relationship with a few of the neighbors with whom I shared (extremely thin) walls. Among my main concerns was being able to return to the place after this was all done without much changing. I wanted my stuff to be intact and the relationship with my closest neighbors to be preserved.

The trick would be to achieve this all while selling the local lifestyle. Aside from my immediate neighbors, I live in a twenty-unit apartment complex where many of the residents seem to spend more time lighting up joints than punching a time clock. Although everyone was generally friendly, I did, on the occasional Tuesday at 3am, have to kindly remind a new tenant and his friends that it was a worknight and there might be areas other than directly across from my bedroom window to finish their Coronas. Without a doubt, my work was cut out for me.

So I drafted an ad that I thought captured the essence of what I was trying to achieve:

It was a Sunday evening when I posted it on Craigslist. The journey, it seemed, was underway.

 – TOH