I moved to San Francisco in 2008 with nowhere to live, surviving my first weeks by crashing on a campus couch and sleeping with my luggage tethered to my wrists. It was scary, but I knew I’d eventually find a home in the LGBTQIA-inclusive Bay Area. I quickly put my queerest foot forward at Facebook meetups, Craigslist ads, and nightlife events until a few weeks later, when I found my tribe and, ultimately, a friend to live with in the Castro.
That was more than a decade ago. Since then, the queer population in the Castro — and across the city — has drastically decreased due to a lack of affordable housing and ongoing evictions of queer artists and seniors. No matter how many rainbows the city adds to celebrate our presence, we’re finding it kinda hard to stick around.
As countless think pieces and social media rants about the city’s changing dynamic multiply, one constant source of support for the queer community has caught on: a modest, 8,000-person Facebook group called Juanita’s List — and I’m obsessed with it.
It’s honestly one of the last positive things on Facebook and probably the only reason I haven’t deactivated my account.
The group was created in 2014 by San Francisco drag legend Juanita More, who wanted to help folks in a bind find a space to live after too many people she knew left the city due to the increased costs.
“I kept hearing friends were looking for roommates from the community, so I’d go running around the bar at night trying to find someone who needed a place to live,” she told me. After almost three decades of hosting nightlife and philanthropic events in San Francisco, Juanita has seen her fair share of friends get pushed out of the city.
“People are still telling me that they’re getting evicted or having to leave because their rent is suddenly double the cost,” Juanita added.
Will you get a roommate? A playmate? Who knows. Scrolling through the page shows a fascinating blend of artists, techies, and activists house-hunting and cruising all in one group.
The group is clearly a vital community service, but I’m not obsessed with it for the window-shopping voyeurism I could do on any old platform. No, Juanita’s List is so much more. The listings are snapshots of the evolving demographics of our diverse community. It’s part real estate porn, part diary entry, and in some cases, part dating profile.
I’m captivated by the posts in the group — each one a peek into the lives of the modern San Franciscan. Often, they are deeply personal and revealing. Someone introducing themselves to look for housing might share about their job, their lifestyle, their home behavior — and accompany it with the same photos they just uploaded to Tinder. Or LinkedIn. Or Grindr. It really depends on the person.
Will you get a roommate? A playmate? Who knows. Scrolling through the page shows a fascinating blend of artists, techies, and activists house-hunting and cruising all in one group.
In all my time on Juanita’s List, I’ve wondered whether potential roommate meetups ever went beyond home tours. Group members actively comment on posts to either express interest in roommates or offer a flirtatious compliment. And while I’ve read countless listings with interest, I’ve only actually used the group once.
Late last year, my friends Tina and Ana, both queer women of color, needed a roommate — someone sane, safe, and preferably from within the community — to join them in their SOMA apartment.
“It felt way safer to post that we were a married couple looking for a roommate on Juanita’s List than to post publicly on Craigslist,” Ana told me, “because you have to be preapproved before you post anything, which is a great security feature. It’s also easier to figure out that someone is a real person through Facebook instead of random emails from Craigslist.”
Juanita’s List has a moderator to ensure that prospective members are legitimate and have the right intentions in joining.
“I want to make sure that people are right for the group, so we’ll give them a few days to respond to some preliminary questions,” Juanita told me. “We want to welcome everyone, but they need to show that they’re interested in being positive, active members of the community. But it’s not that intense. I mean, I also ask them who their favorite San Francisco drag queen is, and five times out of 10, it’s not me! Can you believe it?”
The moderator gets anywhere from 50 to 100 requests a week to join, from city dwellers in a pinch to people from all over the country eager to move to San Francisco.
When helping out my friends, I did my due diligence and perused the page to find the right candidate. That’s when I found Gordon. His personal ad had all the right ingredients: a promising career, charming banter about his lifestyle, and a tasteful selfie to boot. As it turns out, it took him a lot of time to come up with the perfect post.
“I put a fair amount of thought into it,” Gordon later confessed to me after moving into my friends’ place. “I thought to myself, ‘How do I maximize the possibilities of a good outcome?’ I looked at the [posts] that had the most engagement, and it seemed to be a combination of earnest authenticity, a cute selfie, and maybe some clever, flirtatious witticisms.”
Gordon had clearly picked up on the duality at play between house hunting and flirting in the group like I had. So I had to ask him how he landed on the all-important photo to seal the deal.
“I didn’t want to be too thotty in my profile photo,” he explained. “So I chose a picture I thought was the right balance of professional and cute. It really paid off, because the post got a bunch of comments, and I got tons of inbound messages. I had six visits planned within two days.”
I sent his post over to my friends because his profile was intriguing enough yet he wasn’t sharing pictures of himself shirtless at a circuit party or holding a litter of tigers while backpacking in Phuket. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either of those photo choices — though there are some naysayers who post critical comments about salacious images or messages — but it just wasn’t the first impression I thought my friends would enjoy.
Gordon ultimately decided to live with my friends after sharing their mutual appreciation for plants and SOMA nightlife. But I still had to know if any of the other responses he got were less about real estate and more about hooking up. Gordon let out a big sigh and started to blush.
Living authentically and unapologetically is the basis of LGBTQIA empowerment, so a group like Juanita’s List should be a place for us to be as candid and authentic as possible, haters be damned.
“The first guy I visited had a loft that was completely open, with just curtains for walls,” he said. “He was a nice enough guy, but it was just not enough privacy for a bedroom. So I looked at other places throughout the day, but later, at 2 a.m., he started sending a series of messages that were pretty flirtatious. The moment he crossed that line, it was like, ‘I’m not going to be your roommate.’ But what’s even wilder is that after hitting me up with messages that were very much sexual, he followed up with, ‘So what are your thoughts about the room?’”
“Perhaps he wanted a twofer,” I quipped. “You know, a roommate and a bedmate is actually a pretty good deal in this market.”
Feeling validated about my suspicions, I asked Juanita what she thinks about naysayers who claim everyone should keep their clothes on and keep their after-hours details to a minimum.
Without hesitation, she checked me with some real talk.
“People are going to express themselves however they can,” Juanita said. “Sometimes people post photos that I wouldn’t put up and say things about themselves that can be too much, but if that’s who they are, then they’ll find people who are like them, and they can live together. And I know some people on there complain about the photos people post, but really, fuck it.”
Every post from an optimistic newcomer makes me nostalgic for the boy I was 12 years ago — naive and hopeful and eager as hell to live in San Francisco.
Juanita was right. Living authentically and unapologetically is the basis of LGBTQIA empowerment, so a group like Juanita’s List should be a place for us to be as candid and authentic as possible, haters be damned. It’s an incredible space to make sure our presence stays put in a housing market as chaotic and competitive as San Francisco’s.
In fact, Juanita wants to go further to keep our population housed. She plans to collaborate and fundraise with the San Francisco LGBT Center’s Host Homes project to pair young adults with temporary community hosts and receive case management services to help them secure stable housing.
“There’s a high number of the homeless population in San Francisco that are queer or LGBT youth, and I want to make sure that we reach out and incorporate them into this group as well,” she said.
The more I think about my obsession with Juanita’s List, the more I realize I’m not scrolling through the posts because I’m some voyeuristic creep. (Well, not entirely, at least.) I realize that every post from an optimistic newcomer makes me nostalgic for the boy I was 12 years ago—naive and hopeful and eager as hell to live in San Francisco.
After witnessing this city’s many cultural shifts over the years, I sometimes catch myself falling out of love and even resenting the city I’ve called home. But the more posts I read from all the different people in my community who are trying to keep our culture alive, the easier it is for me to fall back in love.
