Fortunately, by October, he was working nights as a film colorist — he had arrived in New York with a list of about 30 contacts; the 29th he called led to a job — and was able to afford a sublet. He found a two-bedroom share in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Craigslist; at $800, it met his budget of “as cheap as possible.”

It did not, however, mark the end of tiptoeing around roommates — in this case, literally. Upon moving in, Mr. Boscacci discovered that while the apartment was a two-bedroom, a third roommate slept on the living room floor.

“She had a mattress in the middle of the floor, like it was a studio apartment. I had to walk past her to get to the bathroom and the kitchen,” said Mr. Boscacci, who came home from work very early in the morning when the living room’s occupant was asleep. That she was good-natured about the situation, and insisted she was a sound sleeper, did little to alleviate his guilt.

“It was just this awkward traverse of this creaky hardwood floor. I was like, ‘I’m definitely waking her up,’” he said.

The awkward traverses soon came to an end.

After one month in the sublet, he heard that a cinematographer he knew through a mutual friend was looking to fill a room in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. As the cinematographer was the kind of guy “a lot of people looked up to,” it didn’t occur to Mr. Boscacci that he should ask to move in. But the mutual friend insisted he reach out.

When he visited, he found a spacious three-bedroom with board games in the living room, film equipment in the closets and a fully equipped kitchen with a Julia Child-style pegboard on one wall. And as the apartment was rent-stabilized and his roommates had moved in shortly after graduating from the film program at New York University in 2012, rent was an affordable $750 a month.