Siri Ullery moved from Wyoming two months ago for graduate school in library science at UW-Madison. In preparing for the move, she made a spreadsheet of 32 potential apartments to rent.
“It had prices, distance from bus stops, accommodations,” says Ullery, who also works part-time in the State Historic Preservation Office of the Wisconsin Historical Society. She says the process of applying for apartments was “exhausting” and expensive: “Each application cost around 30 to 50 bucks.”
Rather than living in Madison, she and her three roommates eventually chose an apartment in Cross Plains, where they each pay $560 in rent a month. She further saves money on parking by driving her car to a nearby strip mall and taking a bus to campus…