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Officially the Men in Black agents do not exist. No paper trail or forensics of them can be found. So one has to ask how does J and likely every other agent have a home to live in when not on shift?

TheLethalCarrot
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Connor Lonergan
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    Because MIB own the properties they live in. – Valorum Jan 04 '19 at 12:17
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    Wipe the memory of the landlord as soon as you have the rental agreement signed ? Oh wait, why even the agreement, swipe memory, occupy and enjoy ! – R S Jan 04 '19 at 12:19
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    How hard can it be for MIB to arrange for the agents to rent or buy housing under false identities? And as some have suggested, possibly MIB owns an apartment building and/or a neighborhood of houses for agents to live in. – M. A. Golding Jan 04 '19 at 16:12

1 Answers1

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Although it's not confirmed in the films (or their accompanying novels), the reality seems to be that MIB probably own and operate the apartments that their Agents live in.

Z: You will conform to the identity we give you, eat where we tell you, live where we tell you

The most obvious evidence for this is the large armoury found in Agent K's old apartment. It seems very unlikely that K would have had the personal skills to install and equip such a large add-on without at least consulting with his superiors.

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J's apartment (from MIB:3) seems spartan to the extreme. Basically just somewhere to sleep and chill before returning to work in 8 hours. Note that it's also in the standard MIB monochrome colour-scheme.

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Valorum
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    It's more or less hinted at in the 'welcome speech' by Z: "You'll conform to the identity we give you, eat where we tell you, live where we tell you." While they have their agent identity, they're human, they need to unwind and such, they can't be on-call 24/7 in the MIB compound, that's recipe to go crazy which would be bad with the tech they have at hand. – Sava Jan 04 '19 at 15:21
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    That's 36/4.6667, not 24/7, in Centurion days. You either get used to it or go mad. – steenbergh Jan 04 '19 at 15:24
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    Haha... I'd never noticed the picture (or maybe it's a (possibly chalk/charcoal) painting) of Frank before :) – Jon Clements Jan 04 '19 at 15:48
  • Isn't though in the second movie, they go back to K's old apartment which is occupied by civilians at the time to retrieve some items and then mind wipe on the way out? – BPugh Jan 04 '19 at 19:49
  • @BPugh - Yes, presumably MiB are letting the apartment out (in the absence of an Agent to occupy it). – Valorum Jan 04 '19 at 19:57
  • "Thats hot, yeah that's hot" - Agent J witnessing alien activity – nodws Jan 05 '19 at 00:15
  • Intergalactic keggers can become quite expensive. It's on AirBnB for sure. – Mazura Jan 05 '19 at 01:50