Prior to this week, I too would hopefully scroll the many housing ads on craigslist everyday in search of a decent pace to stay for a decent price, using my sparse daytime minutes to make frantic calls in response to those ads, only to be disappointed and sans abode. However, all of this changed on Sunday as the housing Gods and my grandmothers, Ms. Coleen Ransom and Minnie Nealy (R.I.P) looked down from heavens, saw my good friend Danyelle and I in need and delivered us the gift of “the hook up”. See definition below:

Hook up (n):  to know somebody… that knows somebody…that knows somebody who can deliver a good or service when it is most needed  

Example:  “I need a cheap place to stay, close to a main line of transportation with two bedrooms, in a safe neighborhood, in one week...you got me?”

“Yeah, I know somebody who knows somebody… Yea, I got the hook up on all that…”

Due to the hook up,Danyelle and I have entered the world of apartment rentership as tenants of a two-bedroom apartment off Georgia Ave for only $1100 (550 a piece) a month. And for this $550 a month (that’s in the city, close to a main line of transportation, and in a safe neighborhood ), we aren’t rooming in someone else’s house, have our own kitchen, living room, and bathroom all because I knew somebody (Danyelle), who knew a mutual somebody (our boss)...who knew somebody…who delivered the “hook up”. ‘

Point of this blog:  

The real search for housing in DC has to go beyond craigslist, and the promising (and sometimes creepy) ads in the back of the City Paper or Express…my advice is to keep your ear to the streets and make nice with your employers, because you never know whether or not they have cheap property you can rent. As the saying goes in this town , “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. Now excuse me, I have to find a free bed on craigslist.

* Tonight’s title is taken from a track off of Master P’s 1998 motion picture  soundtrack of the same name