In 2010 my number came up for a studio in a building near Union Square. To put my affordable housing good fortune into perspective, I have been applying for affordable housing opportunities for 20 years.
I have a co-worker who is in the process of getting an apartment. I know five people in my outer circle of friends who have won affordable housing lotteries in the past 5 years. I have a close friend who has recently been invited to interviews for two different apartment buildings. (The market rate of this same one-bedroom is $5,000.) To give you a sense of price, the rent stabilized lease I signed for my apartment is a one-bedroom for $810 a month. (The building receives a tax break for participating.) And, the rest of the 80% of their units are priced at market rate. Participating buildings reserve 20% of their units for very low, low and middle income people at a deeply reduced rental rate. This particular apartment is in a new building that is participating in a 20/80 program. We got this through the NYC Affordable Housing Lottery. I currently live in an affordable apartment at Columbus Circle (Manhattan) that my partner and I won via a housing lottery. We did take that officially rent stabilized apartment off of the Jefferson stop on the L train. Steve - will you please take them to see THAT apartment?" Steve was her assistant, and it was clearly below her to show us such a inexpensive apartment-and the realtors fee she could expect to receive from a lease signing. We pointed to the sign and said, "That's the apartment we want you to show us!!"Ĭompletely disgusted and discouraged with us (and all the time she spent showing us apartments out of our price range) she grumbled, "Ok. Then one day, after a real estate agent brought us back to her office-after she had just showed us a beautiful apartment for $1,350 and expected us to sign a lease-we sat staring at the wall behind her desk where there was a giant sign posted saying TWO-BEDROOM RAILROADS FOR $850. "Now we are actually looking for a two-bedroom for $1,000 a month." A few days later we said, "Now we're actually looking for a two-bedroom for $950 per month." When we discovered this game ( which is still in play today) we changed our tune each time we talked to one of the realtors. When we weren't biting at any of these places, the real estate agents reluctantly began showing us lower priced places - and always with the cautionary phrase - "You need to carry a gun to live in 'that' neighborhood."Īnd it dawned on me, they were trying to scare and panic us into taking a higher priced apartment-not too mention what a racist and classist remark this was. There were in fact, a lot of apartments available in our price range, but realtors were keeping the pressure on to get us (and all their clients) to rent THE most expensive apartment they could possible get us to sign for. (Why did we choose those three? Probably because they were the only ones who returned our calls.)Įven though we stated our price was $1,100 (which in reality was a stretch for us), we were consistently shown apartments priced between $1,200 and $1,600. Once we focused our search on the L line, we worked consistently with three different brokers.
So what looked like a stop WAY out on the subway map, was actually a 15 minute ride to Union Square. We also discovered, by looking at at a true scale map, the train stops along the L line were quite close together. Our primary reason for doing so was because we weren't sure where our jobs would be located in the future and the L train hit every major train line in Manhattan from east-to-west. We ultimately focused our search along the L train subway line. For nearly a year, not one single person ever said anything but, "You will never get a two-bedroom-not even a one-bedroom-for that price." It didn't matter if it was a friend, co-worker, random person on the street, I never heard the word "NEVER" said so many times to me on a daily basis. We knew we probably weren't going to find anything in Manhattan, so we started looking in Queens and Brooklyn.Įveryone, EVERYone I told about our apartment size and price specifications said we would NEVER get that. Our goal was a two-bedroom for $1,100 per month. There was so much competition for housing, you couldn't take a shit without hiring a broker, let alone rent an apartment. It was the height of the DotCom bubble and I was looking for an apartment with a former girlfriend.
0 kommentar(er)
