My one friend with the cat said one of her biggest surprises about New Orleans was how all housing was found through word of mouth. People don't want to rent to people they don't know or who they don't meet through friends, so you just have to talk to random people to find out if they know someone who might have an apartment.
So, after talking to a guy at a coffee shop, she gave him his number and got a call from a friend of his landlord's.
She went to meet this woman, an older (white) woman who had lived in New Orleans for years.
"Darling," she was like, "People here drink. And when I say 'drink", I mean drink."
Then, she was telling her about how she had some new neighbors and had invited them over for a drink, and after a drink they started to take leave because they were going to a movie.
"Darlin," she was like, "I said to them, 'I may have invited you over a drink, but that doesn't mean you stay for just a drink."
During apartment-hunting later, my friend's iPhone died, so she went to some random guy pulling into a driveway in the (nice) neighborhood, and his daughter was home and she came in to use her iPhone charging cord. When asked if she wanted something to drink and my one friend with the cat said she was fine, the doctor was like, "But you haven't even heard what I've got!", and he opened the fridge and showed her iced tea, lemonade, etc., and then he opened the liquor cabinet for her.
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The reason that people do not advertise housing is that they want complete control over who they rent to (yes it is a racism issue). And boy do they drink in New Orleans. Drinking and eating at a level that I have never seen anywhere else. An overstuffed refrigerator is a mark of pride.
I mentioned the racism aspect to my (white, but Jewish) friend who is moving there. She totally sees it now, but wasn't thinkinga bout it. One (old) (white) (Christian) (female) landlord asked her what church she went to! She skirted the question.
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