While Craigslist and newspapers have long served as platforms where renters can solicit apartment offers, public comment features on Nextdoor and Facebook offer something more like a mutual aid society, or a spectator sport, allowing strangers to root on their neighbors\u2019 quests for housing \u2014 or troll them with utter assholery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In response to a Sept. 16 Nextdoor post (opens in new tab)<\/a> from Anton Narayan seeking \u201ca place to rest and get my things together \u2026 just to start over,\u201d\u00a0 commenter Frank Jerich replied, \u201cSan Francisco has literally devolved into an unspeakably horrific extreme liberal city where poor people think they have a \u2018right\u2019 to live here even if they can\u2019t afford to live in SF.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The majority of the 35 responses to Narayan\u2019s post were commenters chastising Jerich, calling him entitled, gross, and rude. Others offered advice for Narayan on how to get a better job.<\/p>\n And then there are the posts that read like primal screams. On July 28, Amy Bacharach posted on Facebook\u2019s \u201cMain Street Mamas: San Francisco\u201d group explaining that her landlord was raising her family\u2019s rent by 63% in December and asking if anyone knew of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on the city\u2019s west side or near its southern border. \u201cWe\u2019re basically the exact type of people SF has been chewing up and spitting out while gleefully laughing over the last decade,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just all emotion, there was no strategy,\u201d Bacharach told The Standard about the post a few months later. She said her anger was the product of having to move her family three times in seven years, first due to an Ellis Act eviction, then to a severe mold infestation, and then to the giant spike in rent. \u201cSan Francisco has become a city of landowners and serfs. \u200aI feel like I\u2019ve loved San Francisco for 20 years, and it has not loved me back in a very long time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Despite her frustration, she described the act of posting as one of hope. \u201cI think that there are still plenty of landlords in the city who put people over profits,\u201d she said. Maybe these landlords aren\u2019t advertising their available units as widely as those seeking to cash in on the rental boom, she figured. \u201cSo, with social media, my hope is that there are people out there who are still a little old-school in their thinking that people should have a place to live that is affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Andrew Gold\u2019s (opens in new tab)<\/a> Sept. 27 Nextdoor post featured a photo of his wife, Ana, her belly pushing out beneath the bottom of her T-shirt, explaining that she was six months pregnant with twins. \u201cFinding a home for our growing family has been quite the adventure \u2026 and not exactly the fun kind. \ud83d\ude05,\u201d Gold wrote. \u201cWe love SF and really, really hope we don\u2019t have to leave the city just as we\u2019re about to start this new chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n Gold said they\u2019d been looking for an apartment for months without luck. Despite their decent salaries \u2014 he\u2019s a therapist, she\u2019s a lawyer \u2014 they found themselves attending one overcrowded apartment showing after another, constantly outbid. The pregnancy makes the hunt especially stressful.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThis is a time for nesting, not necessarily frantically trying to go to open houses,\u201d Gold said. \u201cAll of the energy put into incessantly being on Zillow and Craigslist and writing bios is taking away from finding all the necessities that we need to prepare for the birth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the days since he put up the post, Gold has received mostly positive responses, with commenters offering well wishes and links to apartment listings. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to know we\u2019re not alone,\u201d he said, noting that they still haven\u2019t signed a lease. \u201cThe worst of it has been someone telling us to \u2018join the club.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/-S3840x2622-FPNG.png\"\/)
In a city where the average monthly rent is $4,500, renters are turning to last-gen social media platforms in the hunt for housing.<\/p>\n
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Taylor and Trew\u2019s housing hunt exposed them to landlords who questioned their life decisions. | Source: John DuBois for SF Standard<\/p>\n