Norm Levinsohn, 30, had all the trappings of an upwardly mobile bachelor: a solid job, a set of wheels and a steady stream of dates. But all that changed one day in April when a friend, Scott Cholewa, walked into his one-bedroom apartment in Hicksville, N.Y., and announced: "Norm, I'm getting divorced. Do you want to get a place?" Levinsohn, no fan of living alone and eager to reduce his rent, gave his landlord notice. And then his life began to unravel. The apartment search proved more difficult than either man expected. Cholewa owned a monstrous Rhodesian Ridgeback -- a gift from his former wife in happier times -- and few landlords allowed dogs.

By late May, Levinsohn was living out of his Oldsmobile, keeping his suits in the trunk and spending nights in his office, his bachelor's life having turned into that of a vagabond's . . .
His story is hardly unique. Unwittingly, Levinsohn had joined a nomadic subculture of young professionals in their late 20's, 30's and even 40's who appear to live normal, prosperous lives but in fact are couch-surfers who rely on the kindness of friends, seek shelter in their sport utility vehicles or list about in all-night coffee shops . . .

While the number of yuppie vagabonds in the New York region and across the country is hard to estimate, and housing experts say it is growing because of the unpredictability of modern life: tight rental markets, job transience and personal lives in flux . . .

Others cite bad decision-making, ignorance of the real estate market or a penchant for scrounging. "They get bad advice from someone in Idaho who says, 'You can't live in Hell's Kitchen,'" said Barry Feinsmith, president of the Apartment Store, a national on-line database of no-fee rentals. "So they live on Joe's couch until Joe gets tired of them. And then they live on Sarah's couch." ...

Uncertainty and sudden changes of heart -- common among anxious yuppies as they try to build personal and professional lives -- can lead to real estate disasters, said Feinsmith, of the Apartment Store . "They become homeless because of their own inability to recognize that in a marketplace like this," he said, "the only person who can make decisions is them. The landlord doesn't care."

Levinsohn, who now shares an apartment with Cholewa and his dog in Westbury, N.Y., believes that indecision led to his plight.
"I spent a couple of weeks freaking out, wavering back and forth," he recalled. "Should I talk to my landlord? Get my friend to get rid of the dog? You have to make strong decisions, even if they're wrong."