<p>My d. is currently paying roughly $500/mo rent, shared apartment with 2 others. She has the smallest room, so pays a smaller fraction than the others. (The master tenant sets the rate by square footage). I assume the room is pretty small, but I’ve seen photos of the apartment and it is nicely decorated, albeit cozy, and has a well appointed kitchen, although also cozy. We are experienced city dwellers, not naive – but at the same time also not afraid of downscale neighborhoods. My d. lucked out with that apartment, she would have probably been willing to rent paying twice that much, but with her student loans its nice that she is able to live comfortably on her income. She does have to add the recently increased cost of the monthly metro pass into the mix – although when she complained, I pointed out that if she had a car, she would probably be paying out as much or more in gas & insurance costs, more if you consider a car payment. </p>
<p>In many areas craigslist is a great source of listings for shared housing. The Google streetview feature can be used to check out a neighborhood in advance – you really can get a reasonably good sense of the area from the pictures. There’s a web site called padmapper that is a wonderful tool for searching for listings in specific areas, and they have just added the ability to overlay their maps with ones based on crime stats for people who are really worried about that sort of thing.</p>