Praise be! The Great Shelter Search of 2018 has ended, and instead of a studio apartment, I found a (rental) house and a roommate. 

To those who missed my two previous updates, I’ve been on the hunt since May for a studio or one-bedroom that could move me closer to work, but with enough parking that my out-of-town friends don’t live in fear of the tow truck over a weekend. It took me a week and a half to deduce that downtown Des Moines was not going to work — and, by luck, I came across the house.

Amenities-wise at the house, there isn’t a gym or pool, but if I’m being honest, those are just two convenient ways to be guilted over my favorite pizza order. Instead, there is an original brick fireplace, a two-car garage and a sunroom where I can repeat sun salutations to my heart’s wildest desires. The laundry machines are also included, which, how can you pass on that?

It’s an exciting end to a, frankly, mostly disappointing search. Rental housing in Des Moines seems to be at an all-time high with apartment complexes everywhere downtown, but the reality is that much of that is inaccessible to younger employees without roommates — and midlevel apartments in the rest of Des Moines are tight with demand and poor in communication. 

It became more sobering when I realized I still had things fairly easy. A recent report compiled by the Polk County Housing Trust Fund found that no affordable housing, defined as a two-bedroom apartment, exists in Des Moines for minimum wage earners making an annual pay of $15,080. 

I toured much more than three units, but in the name of “House Hunters” and personal comparisons, I thought I’d review the three most likely apartments I almost rented, compared with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2018 fair market rate forecast for the Des Moines-West Des Moines region, which included Dallas, Guthrie, Madison, Polk and Warren counties. All apartments I searched for were within Des Moines city boundaries except for Building No. 3, located in West Des Moines.

HUD’s forecast for Des Moines metro apartments lists $597 for an efficiency and $708 for a one-bedroom. 

If I go to the website of Complex No. 1 — where I tried to wait-list for both an efficiency and a one-bedroom (sans balcony) — an available studio floor plan could run me either $605 or $660 a month. If I look at one-bedroom floor plans without a balcony, they put me between $630 and $750.

Building No. 2 on my search, a historic renovation, ran between $765 and $795 with an assigned-parking fee of $50, which conveniently was not mentioned during my tour. (Perhaps it’s a new policy? I’m not living there, so I’m not worried.) Garage parking fees, which were disclosed to me, are $75. 

Building No. 3, another historic renovation under construction at the time, was very limited in units and was, understandably, going to be more expensive. The studio I intended to lease ran at $650, according to an email from the developer at the time, and there were no parking fees. The other two studios available ran at $750 and $800 a month, and I didn’t bother considering the one-bedroom.

Maybe this is a problem with HUD’s fair market calculation methodology, which used data from 2011 to 2015 to forecast FY 2018. Maybe this is a side effect of an optimistic market, although if you want to know how it’s really doing, you should read Kent Darr’s coverage. 

I’m clearly no expert, but I’m also not living off of minimum wage, or raising a family, or even owning a dog. Like most everyone, though, I had a budget that would ideally let me build savings and move out of my family’s home at the same time. When it comes to lifestyle, the units marketed toward young professionals like me felt pretty out-of-touch.