[InclinedPlane]

Did you actually look at these listings? Show me specific ones where you can move into an apartment by paying less than $700 for the first month where no credit is required and where the actual monthly rent is under $500. A lot of these listings are scams or deceptions, with the rent being per week or just made up out of the blue.

For example, this is the 2nd listing in that search, dig into it and you get this:

RATES:

Weekly @ $350.00

Biweekly @ $550.00

Monthly @ $960.00

Deposit $250-350

So that's $1200 to move in on the first month. That's a bust.

The next two other rentals aren't a fit for the person in the article, one is for men only, one is for tagalog speaking women only. The next possible rental is 170/week with a 120 deposit, so that's 800 bucks in the first month. The third possibility is "200" (per week I assume) with a 450 deposit (non-refundable), so that's $1250 in the first month. The next one would be $1143 for the first month to move in. The next after that is actually $700/mo including utilities.

There do seem to be a few legit rentals out there in that price range, but none of them have sufficient details to know if you can truly trust them, and who knows if they'll still be available when you have the time to call and arrange a visit, etc. This stuff is not as easy as a lot of people make it out to be. Sure, if you are savvy and put in enough hustle you might be able to find a sufficiently cheap place to live but it's far from a trivial task, and the signal to noise ratio on listings is such that it's going to waste a lot of your time, time you might not have.

[vertex-four]

Also, given that she’d be living on the edge of affordability for the area, she could never put her feet down and build a lasting social/support network - she’d be forced out again in under a decade.