I’ve lived in San Diego and thought finding housing there was hard but it’s a cakewalk compared to the hell that is finding an apartment in Amsterdam. I’ve considered leaving the city at times because finding somewhere decent here that’s also affordable seems close to impossible.
A small town (or range of towns in about an hour radius) in Upstate NY was the hardest. AirBnB and wealthy tech gentrification hit hard, so rent jumped 40% in one year and caused a lot of scarcity.
Even the places that were way above budget had waitlists of 100+ people. They picked people who could prepay, had super high credit (like 770+), and had steady high paying jobs—even for dingy apartments. We were never able to find a place to live.