Help finding a studio/1br for ~$600 in Aurora/Naperville? (Woodridge: apartments, rentals)

[Rachey]

I've been renting a room in a house in Woodridge for over a year. The price is fine ($600 all-inclusive except trash), but I would really like to move into my own space. I'd also like to live closer to my job (gas prices can suck it!). My total commute is about 16 miles/50 minutes per day. Not bad at all compared to many, but I know I can do better. I can't find a single-person living situation that I can afford, though! I can't afford to go higher than $600 in rent, and according to some cursory reading, that should be doable in this area. But, it seems like the places I look for rentals (Craigslist, Google, or Rent.com) aren't very good at finding affordable places unless I want to roomshare. I'm already roomsharing, though, so I don't want to go from a known comfortable roomshare into an unknown potentially very uncomfortable roomshare (I've lived with some crappy people over the past few years, and don't want to risk it happening again).

Also, can I just say that I get really angry over Woodridge's stupid garbage tagging policy? As of tomorrow, tags will be more than $3 per bag! Living in a place that charges per unit of trash encourages my latent hoarding tendencies (why should I pay these douches!? I'll just let it sit in the garage! etc). So, I'd rather live in an apartment or condo with dumpsters I can fill to my heart's content.

I don't care too much about the neighborhood--I don't want to live somewhere with gunshots or that's openly dangerous, but I'm comfortable living in moderately-shady areas and places with no English-speaking locals. The cheaper, the better, as long as it's mine. I just need help knowing where to start, since I'm obviously looking in the wrong places. I'm hoping you guys can help me with this.

Thanks in advance!

[chet everett]

Couple of points:

#1 I often see posts claiming: "Oh sure there are studios (or whatever) for like $600/mo" and in my experience that is just NOT very easy. Basically that is $20/night and honestly that is CRAZY cheap when even the crummiest dive motels routines get more than $200/wk.

#2 I completely sympathize with having a 16 mile commute that takes 50 minutes. That too is COMPLETELY consistent with the kind of TOTAL travel times I routines record on my GPS when I factor in time spent at stoplights and otherwise NOT moving. Too many people that say "OH sure you can get from Harlem Ave to Rt 83 in 20 minutes" are NOT factoring in the time spent stationary...

#3 Even in you look at apartments in run down parts of Aurora where there are "no English speaking locals" the fact is those folks have almost certainly have a desire to rent places that are two bedrooms or more and probably the means to pay considerably more than $600/mo -- the "competition" may be a family with a total household income of nearly $30K willing to spend about half that on rent, so that drives the market...

I am not going to go so far as to say that NO apartments exist at your budget point but, as you already know, if a "shared room" can fetch a landlord $600 odds are more private space will cost more.

[Rachey]

Well this is the most expensive houseshare I've been a part of. I was renting a room in Aurora for $450 and one in Naperville for $500 (all found through Craigslist). So I think it may be possible to find what I'm looking for, if I just knew where to look. I could be deluding myself, though!

Thanks for the reply