The New York Times ran an article last week about the plight of college students and young professionals trying to find places to live in Manhattan. Rents are higher than ever and vacancy rates are the lowest in years, but the city retains its irresistible allure for bright, ambitious young people from all over the world. “There’s still enough of a cachet,�? as one real estate economist puts it.

When it comes to securing housing, young people are coping as creatively as they always have. They’re crowding more roommates into their apartments and putting up extra walls for privacy. Some of them are even camping out in unused or underused office spaces. Maybe they’re even enjoying the adventures now — getting ready for work or preparing meals in overcrowded apartments — but the situation poses real problems.

A lot of these creative solutions are illegal, and some for good reason. Overcrowding is a fire hazard. Building extra walls and turning offices into living spaces reduces owners’ property values. Many landlords now are having to sue their tenants, not for truly irresponsible acts like failure to pay rent, but for the “crime�? of squeezing into spaces that weren’t meant for them to live in.

New York City shouldn’t be turning its bright young people into criminals, or, even worse, discouraging them from coming here. We want the best and brightest to study at NYU and Columbia. We want them to come to the city to be actors and teachers and musicians and foundation officers and graphic designers and entrepreneurs. If only bankers and lawyers can afford to live here, the city will lose the dynamism and excitement that made it possible for the bankers and lawyers to be here in the first place.

What’s to be done? Clearly, we need to build much more affordable housing. But there’s another piece of the puzzle, too: making it easier to find the housing that’s already here. If you need an airplane ticket, you can log onto Orbitz and easily find every seat on every plane that’s headed where you want to go. But there’s no equivalent database for rental apartments. New York City brokers and landlords haven’t been willing to cooperate in the same way that the airlines have, and (not coincidentally) state regulations have made it difficult or impossible for any single company to create a complete rental database.

Isn’t it time for this situation to change? We owe it to our young people and the future of our city.

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