ERIN HAMPSON steps onto the balcony. “Ooooh,” she says. Around the corner are breweries, shops, and restaurants that cater to young professionals like her. She imagines living here, in one of the 406 units of 1225 South Church Apartments in South End, and thinks about how much fun it’d be and what that would cost her: counting rent and fees, close to $1,400 per month, the limit of her budget.
A recent college graduate, Hampson has spent the last two years with three roommates squeezed into a snug two-bedroom apartment near American University in Washington, D.C. Now, like so many other young professionals who move to Charlotte every month, she has her first real job, a paycheck, and the possibility of the glorious freedom that comes from living on one’s own.
When we meet in late January, she’s living with her mother in the Matthews home where she grew up, but the 45-minute commute to her job at a health care nonprofit in Myers Park is getting old. So on this brisk afternoon, I join her to see what apartment hunting is like for the kind of renter these complexes are presumably being built for.
Spoiler: It’s a hassle. The process started days earlier, when she downloaded the Apartment List app to her iPhone. It works remarkably like a dating app: She plugged in personal information (job location, salary, desired features and amenities, and projected rent budget), and the app delivered a list of options, which she swiped right to pursue or left to dismiss. She picked four complexes to explore in four Charlotte neighborhoods: South End, Plaza Midwood, Elizabeth, and SouthPark.
Bu hikaye Charlotte Magazine dergisinin April 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Charlotte Magazine dergisinin April 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without