These Bay Area Renters Are ‘Speed Dating’ to Find a Roommate

Jeremy Walsh walked into the raucous Casements Bar in San Francisco on a recent Thursday night and promptly put on a name tag.

He came to the Mission’s neighborhood Irish pub to attend a “speed-roommating” event, where participants share the same goal: finding someone to live with. Walsh had moved from San Diego a few weeks ago for a job managing an RV and camper van site and has been living in cheap hotels ever since.

To keep up with the city’s high rents, he knows he needs to find an apartment he can afford — and that means finding a roommate.

“I’m glad this event is going on because I would really like to stop living out of a suitcase,” he said.

Walsh donned a white nametag reading, “I Need A Room.” As he entered the bar’s crowded outdoor patio, he kept an eye out for blue tags that said, “I Have A Room.”

“I do feel like I’m speed dating,” he said as he surveyed the crowd.

SpareRoom, the company hosting the event, is an online platform for finding roommates based out of the United Kingdom. The company modeled the event after speed-dating, but without a bell, time limit and rotating chairs. Instead, renters congregate at a public place — usually a bar — and put on name tags stating their name, budget and where they want to live.

Spokesperson Matt Hutchinson said the events draw participants that mirror the larger housing market — and increasingly, reflect its growing unaffordability for an ever-broadening range of renters.

“They’re the housing crisis in a room,” Hutchinson said. “[The events are] a visible indicator of what is going on outside that room.”

With one-bedroom apartments averaging nearly $2,700 in monthly rent in San Francisco, according to the real estate website Zillow, single people looking for a steal can potentially save big if they find a roommate. But even then, those savings don’t go far: Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the city is 140% higher than the national average — more than $3,600 compared to around $1,500.

That’s what brought John Nevis out. The bartender moved from the East Bay to an apartment in the city sight-unseen. But within a week of staying there, he learned the apartment was not as advertised and moved out. He’s been living in a hotel ever since, and it’s getting expensive.

“The hotel — they have limits as well, you can’t live there forever,” he said. “When you don’t know where you’re gonna be at the end of the night, it puts a lot of stress on you.”

SpareRoom held its first event in San Francisco in late May, where more than 40 people participated, according to a local SpareRoom event organizer. This month’s event saw half that number, but one feature remained constant: More people were looking for a room than had one to offer.

Levi Butler, 26, was one of the few who did. Noting the disparity, he felt he should take his time to meet as many candidates as possible to fill his two-bedroom Ingleside apartment.

“I wouldn’t say I have chemistry with anyone here,” he said. “I feel, with male roommates, the goal is that you pretend the other person doesn’t exist, and each just lives in their own world. So as long as I feel I can do that, then I’m fine.”

Hutchinson said, usually, the people who show up to speed-roommating events are around Butler’s age, in their 20s or 30s, but recently, the demographics of SpareRoom users have broadened, with many new users being older.

“It’s not necessarily that people in their 50s and 60s are the biggest group of [people looking for] roommates, but they’re definitely the fastest growing,” he said.

That mirrors rental market trends. According to a recently published study by rental market research group Point2Homes, people aged 55- to 64-years-old are more likely to rent than they were a decade ago. In California, the trend is even more grim: older adults, 50 years and older, are the fastest-growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness.

At this month’s speed-roommating event, Walsh felt like one of the older attendees.

He had approached Butler and connected with him over a shared love of movies. But Walsh is 49. And, he worried the age gap could ruin his chances of getting the room.

“I feel like Levi was just kind of like, ‘Whatever dude, I’ll talk to this guy, I’ve got what everybody wants,’” Walsh said. “I got the feeling I was just a placeholder.”

While Hutchinson said the company doesn’t track how many of the attendees end up as roommates, he said they provide a needed alternative to the online world by moving house-hunting conversations into the real world.

“If you’re [sitting] at a bar or talking to somebody to see if you might live together, you behave differently than if you’re just going through a list and swiping this and dismissing that,” he said. “It can make a difference.”

Becca Freeman was ready to try something new.

The 30-year-old moved to the city from Boston in January and has been renting a two-bedroom apartment in Russian Hill. But starting Oct. 1, Freeman said her uncles, who own the building and have kept her rent low, will increase it.

She had placed ads for a roommate on SpareRoom, Meta’s Marketplace, Craigslist, and other online forums, and even though people have toured the apartment, she hasn’t gotten any bites. The room is priced at $1,950 a month.

At the speed-roommating event, the dynamic was much different, she said.

“It feels better because, honestly, I wasn’t getting a lot [of interest] on the internet,” Freeman said. “These people are actually looking for a room, and they’re not a bot.”

By the end of the night, Freeman said she met three people who seemed like good candidates. The most desirable was a guy who told Freeman that he was looking for a one-year lease before he moved to Europe. Most importantly, he isn’t allergic to cats, which is a plus for Freeman, who has a cat named Oliver.

Walsh left with a few possible matches, but nothing concrete. Same for Butler.

Nevis left without any. He felt he was competing with too many others who were also looking for a room.

“[The house hunt] hasn’t been great, but I know it’s going to get better, he said. “The right thing is going to come about.”