Competing Demands

Getting permanent housing and a job in a big city can be a chicken-and-egg problem. Landlords want you to have a job and employers want you to have an address. My lawyer son in San Francisco is caught in this dilemma.

It’s difficult to know where you want to live until you know where you will be working. In large cities like SF, you could have a commute to work well over an hour depending where you were living.

But even getting short–term housing, the first questions they want to know are “Where do you work?” and “How much do you make?” “I’m looking for a job” is an instant disqualifier for most potential landlords.

When you send out a resume, you really need a mailing address – not so much because they want to check out where you live, but because they might need to mail something to you. So this gets very complicated if you have been constantly moving as has my son.

We suggested getting a PO box, but he claims you must have an address to apply for one. Does this mean homeless people can’t rent PO boxes? And if not, why not?

In the place my son is currently subleasing, the mailbox is locked which means he can’t receive mail. So when he asked us to send his passport, which was needed by a legal headhunter, we were in a quandary. I ended up mailing it to an old friend who does have a permanent address, where he can pick it up next week.

For his sake and ours, I certainly hope he gets a permanent place to live and a job, but I sympathize with the demand for a job and an address that makes it difficult to get either.