Options for housing as a Highschool student for Nasa Internship.

[guest313]

Hi everyone, my names Alejandro and I'm currently in the process of building and application for Nasa as a Highschool student. I was wondering what I would do for housing since the nearest facility is the Kennedy Space Center, which is a few hours from where I live. I know group chats and such with other interns are offered but id rather plan more in advance, thank you!

-P.S I commented about this a while ago and I got a response mentioning housing at a nearby university, or simply an apartment with other inters, any suggestions on how to research further into the former?

[Aida]

Welcome Alejandro!

In general, the process of finding housing begins after you have a start date for your internship and once you've accepted the offer.

Searching for housing before that might be a waste of time because either you don't get an offer or you accept an offer at a different company or location. Also, if you call apartments and homes looking for rental space, they won't know if they have vacancies until you get closer to your move-in date, about 1-2 months in advanced.

Research that I would do before accepting an offer would be research on what it is like living in that area, what natural disasters does that area tend to have (flooding, heat waves, dryness, tornadoes, freezing winters, etc), and what growing industries does that area have (e.g. some towns are focused on petroleum, others on space, research, universities, tech, start-ups, etc). Considering ideally an area within a 20 minute bike ride commute (save a ton of $ on gas, property taxes, and insurance), or worse case within a 20 minute car ride commute.

The question I want to answer is "Is this town a place I'd like to live and work in after graduating from university?" If the answer is yes, then I'd move forward to accepting an offer there to get the real-life experience of living and working there.

As for housing options, you can look into things like:
- renting a 1 bedroom apartment just for yourself
- renting a 2+bedroom apartment among other interns from the area.
- renting a house with other interns.
- renting a room for yourself at an employee's house, perhaps with someone who works in the area or with someone who works at NASA.
- living in a Recreational Van (RV)
- living in a Van and showering at the gym at work.

You can get really creative and find something that meets your needs.

As for where to look, there are listings in search engines, social media, and offline networking. Start a spreadsheet comparing all your options, things like distance to work, dollar per square foot, ... whatever your priorities are. Doing that will help you narrow down your options until the choice is clear.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have more questions.