The other day I was reading an article about transitional living in Vista California. A transition is something that occurs when a resident moves from one stage of life (in this case, a conventional apartment) to another (sober living). My interest in this article was as to whether or not it was possible for me to rent an apartment or condominium and use it as a transition dwelling. In short, I wanted to live full-time in a transition dwelling while participating in the programs offered by HUD (Upper Market Housing Program), in order to help pay for my education. Not only did I want to do this, but I wanted to get married there too, so it was important to me that the place I chose for this purpose had to be as affordable as possible. After reading the article I got curious, so I went ahead and called the manager of the transitional housing that we were interested in. She was very friendly and did provide quite a bit of helpful information, but she told me that the only way that I could possibly rent an apartment using this program was if I was able to show them that I was a member of the tenants’ committee for the building. Apparently, they have a lot of non-profit tenants that occupy these apartments and unfortunately, non-profit tenants are usually underrepresented in the negotiating process in regards to getting higher rent rates, so that is why they only allow non-profit members into the program. Therefore, I am stuck with this inconvenient situation and wondering if maybe I should just give up on trying to save money by paying high rent and foregoing the opportunity to relocate myself to a better, cleaner, more nurturing environment. Nevertheless, I was able to discover some useful information about transition homes on the Net, and luckily it turns out that not all transitional properties are like this. In fact, I discovered that many of them were run by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). They are basically the houses that are meant to be bought and lived in by low income families, while HUD manages their ownership, and the transition from the home to permanent living takes place over a series of five years. I was able to move into my new home two weeks ago, and I can’t say that I’m thrilled with the fact that I was forced to give up a large percentage of my income on a down payment, because I would have loved to buy a house with a higher market value, but I guess it’s good that I don’t have to make too many payments, or I would have been out of luck.