Shirley Evans has spent the past month searching for an apartment while living in motel rooms or crashing at her boss’ home.

No one, she says, will rent to her and her five cats.

“I’m homeless and looking for a place,” Evans says.

Her plight is one of the more extreme examples of how tough it is for renters to find decent, affordable Orange County housing in today’s market.

Keely Glidden and Mike Deon spent two months searching for an apartment so they could move out of his parents’ Irvine home.

Out-of-work teacher Clayton Squires is moving to Mississippi partly because he and his wife had to take in a roommate to afford their Irvine apartment.

And Jeff Harris of Costa Mesa, a sales associate at Home Depot, ended up looking at a mobile home after failing to find a studio he likes during a 2 ½-month search.

The number of renters is on the rise in Orange County, partly because of increasing employment, and partly because so many homeowners lost their properties in the housing crash. Toss in tight mortgage standards and low inventory of homes for sale. The county’s rental occupancy rate now stands at 95.8 percent.

The number of rentals isn’t keeping pace with demand.

U.S. Census estimates show that Orange County renters increased by 15.2 percent from 2005 to 2011. But rental homes in that period increased by just 11.4 percent.

As a result, vacancies have dropped, rents have gone up and competition among house and apartment hunters has gotten intense, landlords and renters say.

“It was harder than I expected because there’s not a lot on the market,” said Karen Jacobson, 50, who shopped for a month before finding a rental townhome in Dana Point for her family after selling her house in Laguna Niguel.

Jacobson and her husband looked at 20 to 30 rentals, checking online sites daily and consulting a real estate agent.

When they found the first place they liked, “we were third in line,” Jacobson said.

Vacancies down, rents up

During the past two years, rental vacancy rates dropped to their lowest levels since 2007. Shoppers for apartments in large complexes had 6,400 empty units to choose from at the end of last year, down from 9,500 at the start of 2009, according to apartment tracker RealFacts.

Meanwhile, rents in those big complexes increased 11 percent over the past two years, or $161 a month. By the end of 2012, the average big-building rent hit a record high of $1,637 a month.

The increase took 32-year-old Amal Karsaz by surprise.

The dental office worker currently pays $1,100 a month for the small studio she’s being forced to vacate. (Her landlord is taking back the unit.) After looking at more than 20 apartments, Karsaz said the best deal she could find was $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom in neighborhoods with questionable safety.

So, she invited a friend living with a grandparent to spit a two-bedroom unit at The Park complex near the Irvine Spectrum for $2,200 a month.

“I had to move in with a roommate,” Karsaz said. “I would have preferred to live by myself, but I couldn’t afford it.”

Tenants say apartments are more plentiful in some South County cities. Upper-priced, newer units are the easiest to find.

Census and RealFacts numbers show that bigger apartment buildings have higher vacancy rates than do smaller buildings and houses owned by mom-and-pop landlords.

Although builders currently have 4,200 new apartments either just coming on the market or under construction, developers primarily are building luxury apartments.

“There’s a shortage of affordable rentals,” said Jerome Fink, managing partner for The Bascom Group, an Irvine apartment investor.

Apartments in Orange County currently cost $275,000 to $350,000 per unit to build, Fink told landlords at the Apartment Association of Orange County’s annual expo earlier this month. Those costs make it difficult for developers to build affordable units.

Landlords, on the other hand, say things are better for them. Getting 15 applications per unit is commonplace, they say, and vacancies often are filled in five days or less – resulting in very little “down time.”

“Everybody wants to be the first one to apply,” said landlord Dave Wentworth, who owns a four-plex and two rental houses in Huntington Beach. “They all want to see it first. It just tells me they’re hungry.”

Kevin Miller, president and part owner of Westside Rentals apartment listing service, said serious house hunters need to be prepared and treat each viewing as if it were a job interview.

“Look nice,” he said. “When you walk through a spot, be grateful for what it is. Don’t give a landlord a hard time about fixing this or that.”

Renter blues

After moving from Florida seven months ago, Clayton Squires and his wife Elizabeth settled in at The Village complex near the Irvine Spectrum, renting a two-bedroom unit so they could take in a roommate and split the rent. They pay $1,000 of the $1,900-a-month rent.

“We looked in Laguna Niguel. We looked in Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. We wondered, is the security here good?” said Squires, the 29-year-old teacher who is moving to Mississippi.

Most rentals either were too close to a busy street, or the neighborhoods weren’t the best, he said.

“There was limited availability of what you could get,” he said. “And the rents were high also. So why would you pay high rents for a place you’re not completely satisfied with?”

Keely Glidden and Mike Deon moved in with Deon’s parents after leaving the state temporarily, then moving back. They planned to get their own apartment quickly, but their house hunt took two months.

The couple, married 1 ½ years ago, spent much of their time driving around Orange County shopping at large apartment complexes.

“The prices they want are incredibly high for what you get,” said Glidden, 30, a former hair-stylist who’s studying to be surgical technician. “There are cockroaches and rats and parties all the time. It’s hard to find a place that’s compatible for you.”

Finally, they sought help from Ricci Realty and found an ideal one-bedroom unit in an Orange four-plex – “just what we were looking for,” she said. Located on a quite cul-de-sac, the apartment had air conditioning, a dishwasher and on-site parking. Rent was $995 a month.

Within hours, the couple filed the completed paperwork and rounded up cash for a deposit that same day.

“We felt if we got the money right away, we’d be ahead of the pack,” Glidden said. “We didn’t want to miss out on this. We couldn’t stand going back to looking.” They moved in mid-January.

Regular pay, good credit and references only go so far.

Tenants with pets often have a hard time. So do folks who get paid in cash.

Shirley Evans, who works in construction, has both challenges.

Even though her boss has written a letter certifying her income, landlords still want to see paycheck stubs, which she can’t produce.

She also has five cats: Chloe, Samantha, Savannah, Seven and Diddles. But the main problem, she says, is finding a place with everything she needs: A one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit with an enclosed garage.

Evans had been living with her mother in Murietta for the last three years, but had to move after her mother died and the house was sold.

She spent three weeks living in three different motels, apartment shopping every day. She spent at least one night sleeping in her car, then moved in temporarily to her boss’ home.

Evans estimated that after six weeks of apartment hunting, she viewed 15 to 20 places and made calls on three times that number.

“It’s difficult for anybody these days,” said Evans, 43. “The price of rent is absurd. I don’t know why it’s so difficult, but I’m not the only one having a hard time.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7734 or jcollins@ocregister.com