In my haste and inexperience with room-shopping, I ended up in a somewhat better place, at somewhat higher cost of rent. It was still a far cry from "good", once I realized the new-roommate-honeymoon was over. And then I was stuck in a 1-year lease. Lesson learned: month-to-month onry.
So in mid-2009, I scraped together first-and-last (or first-and-deposit, whatever, I forget) and moved to a cheaper month-to-month situation. This started out livable, and degraded due to a series of issues I couldn't have predicted: first the rats, then the eviction, then my housemates being negligent slobs.
Interlude: This made 3-in-a-row of roommates who habitually left the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Not just "a few" dishes; I mean literally unusable without having to shuffle their mess around, perhaps entirely blocking the drain.
So mid-2010 I moved again, via Craigslist rather than Roommates.com. Again, nothing that went wrong here could have been foreseen. My sin was simply in being unprepared to move again when all signs suggested it was high time to do so, back in October/November.
So Sunday night I spent my last night wondering if the deranged alcoholic resident landlord was going to set himself or the house on fire or whatever. Monday and Tuesday I got a very comfy $85 room with a king-size bed at the La Quinta that DOESN'T have bedbugs, on SW 12th Ave just south of Hillsboro. Wednesday I got a decent $70 room at the ExtendedStay America next to Cracker Barrel on SW 11th Way (which might also be known as "FAU Research Park Blvd" or similar).
Meanwhile I was also starting to look at rooms. The first was the master bedroom with a really nice private bath in the Natura Blvd/Tivoli Park area. The landlady was willing to get internet added to the cable TV... but when I asked to see the kitchen she said "there's no kitchen". My initial interpretation was that my rent would not entitle me to USE the kitchen... except she then pointed me to a mini-fridge and microwave shared in the living room. If she had a functional kitchen and just didn't intend to let a boarder use it, wouldn't she have placed the minifridge in the room? There was certainly ample space in the bedroom. Anyway, this could have been livable with my own minifridge, but a minifridge shared with her and her elderly father just wasn't going to be sufficient.
The next place I looked was a $550 non-master bedroom, looked clean if a bit dingy, bath shared with another tenant, pool out back. Retired daily golfer landlord and his friendly white labrador retriever in residence. Good that dude was in residence, bad that he was older and a bit hard-of-hearing, a good dog is OK but a poorly-trained or poorly-cared-for dog would be not-OK. I didn't like the house style or landscaping, it looked like a haven for bugs, and the place seemed undercooled even on a midwinter evening. And once again there's that issue of sharing a kitchen with not one but two other adults.
The third place, which I didn't even look at, was a $550 2/2 condo overlooking a golf course. I'm kinda kicking myself for turning this one down now, because I had it in my head that I wasn't accepting anything that wasn't an immediate vacancy.
After Wednesday night at ExtendedStay, I had to change my plan - if I kept "hotelling it", there was a strong possibility that I wouldn't find a suitable vacancy before I ran too low on funds to actually pay rent+deposit, or first+last, or (groan) first+last+deposit. With the place with the pool and lab, I was already having to plead for payment arrangements. So I inquired to one Craigslist ad about week-to-week rentals.
Think about this a mo', if you've never thought about it before: why would a landlord offer a rental unit week-to-week? (Other than a beach-house vacation property, I mean.) It puts them in the position of having to constantly market it, show it, repair damage from the last drifter, prep it for the next tenant. If the property was marketable month-to-month, they'd do that.
For $145/week and a mere $200 deposit, I got 2 rooms, one of which is air-conditioned. This "bedroom" has a bed with new sheets and pillow, TV, rickety dresser, nightstand, smallish but not mini-fridge, microwave, toaster oven and coffee maker. The other room has a commode, shower, one sink that works and another that doesn't (the counter top looks like it was salvaged from a much nice home's his-and-hers master bath), and strangely... a jacuzzi. I assume the jacuzzi works, the landlord said I could use it but I don't intend to waste that much water. Good water pressure. No evidence of bug infestation, but I'll be keeping all perishables and food-y trash safely stashed in the fridge anyway. No internet but the landlord offered to hook me up with a cablemodem.