I wonder if TH Sitters, who need to fill gaps between sits, might work together for an economical solution.
Many years ago, I was an airline flight attendant. I travelled maximum flight hours so, it didn’t make sense to pay for a full-time rental. Instead, a number of us went together and shared an apartment near the airport. That was cheap living. That is one solution.
Perhaps, there are sitters who own a home or rent an apartment and would appreciate extra income by providing a rental space. That is another solution.
Right now, I housesit within 5 hours of the Kansas City area. I am looking for a gap housing solution and wonder if others might have similar interests or ideas.
There are websites designed for owners of houses who want to rent out their spare room, that may be a better option. In the UK there is spareroom.co.uk or openrent.co.uk, I’m sure there must be similar sites in the USA.
That way may be an easier, rather than trying to find sitters who are of the exact same mindset, at the exact same moment in time, who are in the exact same location, that feel like they can get along with one-another, etc, that don’t mind sharing with someone whereby they have no idea about their financial situation, and more importantly who doesn’t mind sharing a living space instead of having a place to themselves like they do with pet-sitting.
We like a lot of sitters never have more than 1 or 2 nights in between sits, and prefer our own space.
Good luck finding a solution, but I think there’s probably easier websites to find temporary shared accommodation, like simply a normal home owner who wants to rent their spare room out, who is happy for a little extra cash.
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In addition to what @HappyDeb mentioned, couch surfing or (for women) Host a Sister groups on Facebook are probably easier to coordinate as well. Hostels are another way to go in some places, for folks who are open to that.
Once, when I was recruited for a job across the country and I wanted to get to know the city before buying, I sublet places off Craigslist. The folks I sublet from left all their stuff, so it was like house sitting and all I needed were my clothes and laptop. My landlords in that case included a woman who was on sabbatical and a professor who was teaching elsewhere for a quarter. In another case, I rented someone’s mother-in-law unit. All of those sublets were cheaper than Airbnb, because the landlords wanted to make sure they got someone who wouldn’t damage their stuff. They interviewed me in person.
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Airbnb does that too. Couchsurfing is another option.
Additional problem is legislation connected to housing and tax issues. I guess these sites would normally have that solved, somehow, as many countries have addressed that I believe. This is very important, as there have been incidents in some countries where people have been refused to stay by police.
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BTW, depending on whether or where you work, there might be networks you can plug into. Like I’ve worked at companies that were huge or had many remote employees or many distributed employees. In such cases, there were internal posts for people who’d be traveling and wanted people to sit their homes and it was free. If you don’t have something like that where you work, maybe you start one.