When Shelby Cohen posted advertisements on Facebook for a new roommate in her Brooklyn apartment, she noted the most important details. She listed the bedroom’s dimensions, mentioned that there was just one bathroom, and noted nearby subway stations. But there was an important caveat for any potential roommate — no alcohol was allowed in the apartment.
“I did put it on my lease as part of the roommate agreement. I was like, ‘if anyone drinks, the agreement’s forfeited,’” Ms. Cohen, 31, said, though she noted that the addendum likely wasn’t enforceable.
Home is a sacred place for Ms. Cohen, who has been sober for three years. And whom she chose to bring into that space mattered. Concerns — a roommate stumbling home from a bar late at night or of Ms. Cohen opening the fridge to find a case of beer — were at the forefront of her mind during her search.
The responses she received, Ms. Cohen said, ranged from the witty to the downright cruel. On Facebook housing groups like Gypsy Housing, originally formed to help artists find apartments or rooms, Ms. Cohen navigated a land mine around preferences.
“I want to come home to, like, a safe space,” she said, “a space that I feel comfortable in. I don’t want to have to open the fridge and see alcohol and have someone smoking weed in the apartment.”
Indeed, preferences around roommate lifestyles aren’t a new phenomenon. There are vegans and vegetarians who prefer to live with roommates who don’t cook meat at home — or even eat meat away from home. Roommates can also align on similarities such as religious backgrounds or political ideologies, and some people prefer not to room with someone of the opposite gender. (While it is illegal for landlords and real estate companies to discriminate based on race, sex, or religion, the Fair Housing Act doesn’t apply to shared housing situations.)
Still, no preference garners quite the same response as someone looking for a roommate who doesn’t drink. For Ms. Cohen, the barbs from nameless, faceless strangers online stung — and these were people who didn’t even want to live in her $3,625 two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in East Williamsburg.
“People thought they were so funny with these ridiculous jokes, like, ‘I’m gonna need a drink if the rent is that much,’” she said.
$2,675 | Jersey City, N.J.
Shelby Cohen, 31
Occupation: Ms. Cohen is doing paid gig work as a data annotator at Data Annotation Tech while she takes an online digital marketing course.
On a social life: Ms. Cohen doesn’t spend too much time in her Jersey City neighborhood, though she has identified her favorite drugstores and supermarkets. “I’m such a Brooklyn girly,” she said. “I lived in Queens forever. I lived in Astoria forever, and I was like, ‘I’m never moving to Brooklyn.’ And then I spent three days in Brooklyn — I was like, ‘I love Brooklyn.’”
On mocktails: Ms. Cohen doesn’t go to bars but will dine at a restaurant with a bar. “I love a mocktail, but I don’t like the mocktails that have fake alcohol in it. I won’t drink nonalcoholic beer; I’m not into nonalcoholic wine. But when it’s like lemonade and lavender or something cute and colorful that’s not meant to taste like alcohol, I love to do that.”
But sober and sober-curious living is on the rise, in part from an overreliance on booze during Covid-19 lockdowns, rising prices on alcohol, and an influx of nonalcoholic craft cocktails and beers. Sixty-three percent of Americans 12 and over reported that they drank alcohol in the past year, according to data from a 2022 study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and nearly 22 percent in that age group reported binge drinking in the past month.
In New York, one only has to look at the influx of nonalcoholic bars to see that sober living isn’t merely a January resolution but a full-year commitment. Still, finding a sober roommate in a city of drinkers proved difficult. In addition to online housing groups, Ms. Cohen said she struck out among people in her network of sober friends. There were roommates who committed to a sublease agreement only to move in elsewhere with a partner. And even when she did find interested candidates who didn’t drink, her cat allergy stopped even the most well-matched potential roommates.
Eventually, the difficulty of finding a roommate who abstained from drinking, plus the allure of finally living alone, was too hard to resist. That meant moving out of her apartment and decamping to Jersey City. Across the river, Ms. Cohen pays around $2,675 monthly (her parents cover a portion of the rent as she mulls a career change to the e-commerce field) for her one-bedroom apartment, which she moved into in late March.
“One of the reasons I’m in a one-bedroom,” Ms. Cohen said, “is because it’s really hard to find someone in a similar age range who’s looking for similar things — and people like to drink.”
“It’s nice to have the space to myself and not have to worry,” she continued. “There’s always the worry: What if the other person wants to start drinking again? What do you do in that situation?”
She doesn’t have those concerns anymore, and with the space all to herself, Ms. Cohen has taken to decorating her apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows give her unobstructed views of the hills of New Jersey, an in-unit washer and dryer helps doing laundry with a bad back, and plates gifted to her by her grandmother have made a large building feel more homey.
In her apartment, she’s gone with a cozy, midcentury modern approach. Much of the furniture has followed her from her Brooklyn apartment, from her “piece of junk” TV stand from Wayfair to a green velvet couch. Trying to strike a balance between keeping a homey aesthetic with the glitz of a new-construction apartment has been a challenging, fun project.
Though she’s enjoying a respite from the city in New Jersey, Ms. Cohen still considers her life to be in Brooklyn. Her friends and community in Brooklyn are just a Path train and M.T.A. ride away for coffee dates, nonalcoholic dates and concerts.
“Coming home and having this beautiful safe space, where after being out with friends, it’s just relaxing,” said Ms. Cohen. “It honestly feels like heaven.”
The post The Make-or-Break Question for a New Roommate: Do You Drink? appeared first on New York Times.
