The Real `Real World' -- It's Not Fame That Brings Seattle's Housemates Together - It's Money, And A Tight Housing Market

As Ryan Bostick changed into running gear at his Montlake home, he recalled being forewarned. His housemates would include a grad student at work on her thesis, a neat freak, a Navy recruiter, a relocated Montanan, and - raising his voice to be overheard - the wild one.

In the kitchen, Rachel Mamane, dressed in her punk-girl meets Martha Stewart ensemble - all black down to three-inch-heeled platforms - paused from her work and weakly protested.

"It was probably because I used to do belly dancing," she explained, then resumed the delicate task of wrapping kiwi, strawberries and coconuts into a spring roll.

"Ryan," she offered in revenge, "is the socialite of the house. He flirts with every female in the house. He's our boy toy; he takes our abuse."

It could be an outtake from MTV's "The Real World" - the popular series recently filmed in Seattle.

But this is as close as the real, real world gets to fantasy TV.

Like the housemates assembled for the TV-verite series, these twenty- and thirtysomethings, and a growing number of others like them, have come together to share a home with complete strangers. What brings them together isn't fame, but something far more real: Seattle's tight housing market.

In recent years, as vacancy rates in trendy neighborhoods like Capitol Hill have hovered around 1 percent, house sharing has become an increasingly popular and necessary option for young people who can't afford their own space.

Capitol Hill's Seattle Roommate Referral Service, which maintains a database of available housing, has a steady flow of young people flipping through its binders, particularly in summer.

"All the 19-year-olds who end up coming here, the musicians and baristas, are looking for spaces $300 and below," said manager Dan Hamann. "Those are very difficult to find."

A 500-square-foot one-bedroom in popular neighborhoods starts at about $575 and studios aren't much cheaper, he said. And you can forget about finding anything like "The Real World's" Pier 70 hangout. First of all, the piers aren't zoned for housing, but if they did have residences, they would likely cost well over $1,500 per bedroom, said Hamann, who based his calculations on the price of units near the pier.

Cash-strapped young people have better ideas for where their money can go.

Danielle Pollack, a 25-year-old jewelry artist and aspiring playwright, pays about $200 for her share of the Central Area house she shares with her boyfriend - an animator - and two other men, a carpenter and a medical intern. It's a choice, she says, made to support her art.

"This is absolutely economically driven," Pollack said. "I couldn't pay anything that low if I lived by myself. But because we do creative stuff, it's hard to make a million bucks. That's the way we are: We'd rather be making art than money, though I would love to have our own house."

"The Real World" offers a distorted view of how young people live, Pollack said.

"It's disgusting," she said. "It's just a way to manufacture and package young people and our lifestyle. Then they sell it back to us at 50 percent mark-up. It's such a big sellout."

The key to successful house sharing is finding people you can live with - a tricky job for those who find housemates without benefit of a nationwide search taken care of by producers.

When one of Pollack's housemate recently moved out, the vacancy attracted a string of oddball candidates, including a woman terrified of basements and attics, and a mysterious elderly man who'd just moved from Florida.

Sanju Thomman, a 26-year-old Chicago transplant beginning a residency at Swedish Hospital, got the spot.

Although he immediately liked the house, a 1903 Victorian elegantly restored with stained-glass ceilings and clawfoot tub, Thomman was also sold on his housemates.

While "The Real World" tends to bring together people who are virtually guaranteed to clash, in the real world, many people look for compatibility.

When Thomman met his housemates they quickly discovered shared musical tastes. Thomman also liked the clear-cut division of housecleaning chores, which Pollack half-jokingly says she created for self-preservation as the only woman in an otherwise all-male house.

"It's really hard to move to a place where you don't know anyone and find roommates right away," said Thomman, who gave up on finding his own space because of high costs. "Usually it comes down to a feeling you get about other people."

Then comes the adjustment period.

There are the usual tensions - not over big "Real World" hotpoints like racism or homophobia - but over the mundane issues like dishes unwashed and bathrooms uncleaned. And significant others, particularly boyfriends, have sometimes required some extra reassurance.

At the Montlake house, a recent addition to the city's shared-housing stock, housemates are still getting used to their new living arrangement.

Although the house has been full for months, most residents still haven't completely unpacked. In the living room, decorated with the requisite post-dorm futon and mismatched furniture, the book shelves are empty except for a messy stack of videotapes that seem fresh out of a moving box. And while the house boasts a hot tub - as "The Real World" Seattle pad does - it's hardly ever fired up.

But despite its diverse mix of residents, the roommates say they've fallen into a comfortable groove.

On a recent Friday evening, they flowed in and out of the house, grabbing a quick bite, sampling the latest creation being tried out by Mamane, a dessert chef at the Alibi Room, and passed on news.

When the housemates first moved in, they didn't spend much time together, said Bostick, a 26-year-old computer engineer. But, while they still lead largely independent lives, they've also started to spend more time with each other, pairing up for workouts, going club-hopping, or staying home to watch videos.

Then there are the seven-course gourmet extravaganzas occasionally served up by Mamane, including one that featured artichoke hazelnut soup, wild mushroom fettucine and seafood mousse.

Not that it's all been scenes from "Friends."

Bostick and Nina Hadley, a 25-year-old University of Washington graduate student who's just finished her marine-affairs thesis, got off to a rocky start.

"I have a really weird sense of humor and not everyone gets it and sometimes people get mad," Bostick said.

Shortly after moving into the house, he saw Hadley cooking in the kitchen late at night, tasted her food, and playfully asked her if she had someone up in her room waiting for her.

"It didn't go over well," Bostick recalled. "She didn't appreciate my joking around."

"She didn't feel the love!" Mamane chimed in from the kitchen.

But the housemates have also helped each other through difficult times.

Hadley has found it impossible to leave her housemates. When she moved in this winter, she initially planned to stay at the house just three months, until she finished her thesis.

A few weeks ago, she packed her stuff in boxes and the vacancy was advertised in newspapers. But recently Hadley learned that the funding for the job that she'd been counting on had fallen through.

"Ryan was around when I found out I wouldn't get the job, and I was bawling and in tears, and he was the one who gave me a hug," she said.

Hadley's housemates talked her into staying at the house.

"This has worked out great," she said. "I love it. Here I have insta-friends. It's not only a housing arrangement for me, but a friendship package."

Bostick joked that the house was still in its honeymoon period, when everyone likes everyone else.

"Come back in six months, we'll all probably hate each other," he said.

But this isn't "The Real World"; there's no tuning in next week.

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"The Real World" airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. and repeats on Saturdays at 8 and 8:30 p.m. and Sundays at 9 and 9:30 p.m. on MTV.