Katon

Hello everyone, My wife and I are a grad student couple moving from Canada to Boston, where she will be attending a Ph.D. program at Harvard. Naturally, we've got tons on questions about housing, transportation, and safety in Boston. Browsing through this forum has been extremely helpful, and yet there are some questions that haven't been covered before. Would anyone be able to help us with them? First, a lot of people mention that some (or many) prospective landlords ask for co-signers, credit check, and background check. How do international students (or Canadian students, if there are any here) deal with such requests? Are the landlords willing to accept co-signers and credit and background checks from outside the United States? Second, most apartment listings indicate a no-pet policy. How flexible are the landlords about that? Our indoor cat is coming with us, and we are wondering whether those "no-pet" clauses target dog owners or multiple cat owners, or whether they strictly imply "don't even bother calling if you got a cat". Third, for at least a year, my wife and I will be on a very tight budget, living off her standard stipend of 28,000 a year. It seems that, oftentimes in Boston, this is hardly enough even for one person. We are ready to compromise on transportation and local amenities, but not on safety or housing quality (very reasonably conceived, i.e., we want to avoid issues with heating, water, electricity, pests, and super-thin walls or rowdy neighbours). We are also reluctant to move into a studio apartment or an apartment with roommates; ideally, we would like to find a one-bedroom, at least a tiny one. Are there any areas that we should focus on? Any general advice you could give us?