A Future President and The Columbia Heights Bathroom

• April 1st 2011

by Mark Wellborn

It is not by choice that Jeremy Taylor wakes up every weekday morning at 6:15am. Taylor’s housemate, Rachel Williamson, gets up then, and she needs to use Jeremy’s “room” to get ready for her job on the Hill.

“I live in the bathroom,” Taylor said with a hint of pride.

It is no secret that finding a reasonably-priced rental in DC has gotten increasingly difficult for young professionals over the past year. However, Taylor’s living arrangement is illustrative not just of the city’s high rents and low vacancy, but also the absurd lengths that people with political aspirations are willing to go to live in DC proper.

Taylor admits that the fact that the he goes to bed each night in the tub of a bathroom in a five-bedroom Columbia Heights house may seem strange to some out there, but he said that he can live with the situation temporarily, if it means staying in DC.

“I’d like to be president one day, and I am pretty sure that you have to have DC residency to do that,” he said confidently.

Taylor’s DC bedroom did not always have a toilet in it. Two months ago, he was laid off from his job for what he describes as “a massive conspiracy.” We spoke to his former boss, however, who said that Taylor was fired for “delusions of grandeur.”

“He tried to institute a policy where everyone had to say the Pledge of Allegiance together in the morning and he was constantly on a website devoted to George Washington!” his old boss explained before slamming the phone down.

At the time, Taylor was living in an Adams Morgan two-bedroom apartment with a good friend from college, and the ending of the lease not only coincided with Taylor losing his job, but also his roommate’s decision to move in with his girlfriend.

Taylor began scouring Craigslist, but found that, given the small amount of money he had in the bank and no current employment, even a small room in a house on the fringes of DC was beyond his means. Around the time that his bank account began going into “checking plus” territory and just a week before his lease was up, Taylor became both desperate and creative. He was visiting his friend Liz in Columbia Heights when he floated the idea: for $100 a month, would she allow him to live in the home’s largest bathroom.

“She fake-laughed at first and then realized I was serious, and it got a little uncomfortable,” Taylor explained. “Uncomfortable for her, at least.”

He rationalized that it would just be for a month or two until he found a job, and reminded her that he would be president one day and wouldn’t forget this favor. Liz told him everything he just said barely made sense, but that she would humor him, by asking her roommates. Surprisingly, they were all fine with it.

“If he wants to go to sleep next to the toilet and subsidize my rent at the same time, I don’t have a problem with it,” Rachel Williamson said. “We may try renting out the kitchen soon.”

In addition to a daily wake-up call, Taylor outlined some of the other downsides to living in a bathroom:

• It can be wet. The tub’s faucet sometimes has a mind of its own and will shoot water out on his feet in the middle of the night.
• It is small. The shower rod serves as Taylor’s closet and the cabinet underneath the sink holds his socks and underwear. He reads on the toilet (seat down) at night.
• In his own words: “Some of my housemates don’t know how to use the brush on the toilet bowl.”
• Needless to say, it has had a serious effect on his social “game”.
• His housemates frequently forget that he lives in the room, and on several occasions have come into use the bathroom while he is asleep.

Taylor may soon be able to leave the cramped confines of the bathroom. One of the housemates is moving back home, opening up a room, and Taylor has three job interviews lined up next week, one of which is with a senator’s office on Capitol Hill.

“Apparently, Andrew Jackson briefly lived in a bathroom,” he said. “I figure that this will make a great chapter for when I publish my memoirs.”

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This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_future_president_and_the_columbia_heights_bathroom/3257.