Author’s note: I wrote most of this article in 2018—but everything is still fresh, except for one or two places where I added interesting updates.
I’ve been a resident of New York City for a couple decades now, and as anyone who has watched Friends or Seinfeld knows, a rent-controlled apartment is your golden ticket to happiness here. We all know that the rent is too damn high and every little bit of legislation fighting it helps.
Our story begins in the late 1990’s when a younger rhywun with few practical skills thought he could move to the big city and strike it rich. What he wound up with was a shitty, cockroach-infested garbage dump in Queens that rented at the princely sum of 750 dollars a month for two bedrooms—one king-bed sized room for his best bud from college and one barely twin-bed sized room for himself.
The rent was payable in cash whenever the landlord (who spoke no English) or his daughter (who was a nasty piece of work) felt like showing up to collect it. Complaints about the iffy wiring which required knocking on Mohammed’s door downstairs to reset the circuit breaker every time we ran more than one electrically-powered object at a time, or about the rotted wall in the kitchen that was about to poke through to the outside, fell on deaf ears.
“But wait!” I exclaimed. “Where’s the rent control? Why am I paying so much money to live in a dump?” Well, it turns out that rent control stabilization* only kicks in with buildings of six units or more. Mine was only two units. Clearly, I was being taken advantage of.
*Read on for the gory details about “rent control” versus “rent stabilization”!
Seven years passed.
In the interim I had taught myself a thing or two about making money and decided it was time to strike out on my own. Natually, I wanted in on some of that sweet rent stabilization action. Manhattan, here I come! I wound up in a nice tenement just off 6th Avenue in Chelsea. I smiled and nodded during the lease signing, not noticing that what I was really signing was some sort of sublet, the legality of which I still question to this day. Needless to say, I was not getting any of the bennies that rent stabilization was supposed to be giving me. I was only there two years and already the rent got jacked up higher than I could afford. It was time to say good-bye to Manhattan.
In desperation, Craigslist led me to a decent flat in Saturday-Night-Fever Brooklyn with token rent increases over four years. And I mean token: ten dollar increases every year. The landlord apparently valued stability or something. “Now wait a minute. This isn’t rent-stabilized! Why am I being offered rents that I can afford year after year? What sort of sorcery is this?” I was soon to find out.
By this time, I thought I was clever enough to finally get me some rent stabilization goodness and by gum I finally did it. You see, the last place had some drawbacks maintenance-wise. I wanted an honest-to-goodness superintendent on site (rather than the landlord’s “guy” who might show up in a timely manner depending on his mood or the alignment of the planets), and a management company to back him up. But most of all, I wanted an iron-clad guarantee that the rent wasn’t gonna get out of hand. I didn’t want to be beholden to the “goodness” of some profiteer. All of this meant finding an apartment in a bigger building, and as it happens I found one right around the corner and took my sweet time moving into it. So here I am, seven or eight years later, basking in rent-stabilized heaven. And let me list all the ways I benefit!
- I pay a “preferred rent”. This is what the city calls a rent that’s less than what the landlord is legally allowed to charge based on what the city says they could charge based on the city’s astute observation of the market (they call this the “legal rent”). In other words, the city allows the landlord and me to agree on our own rent figure. “Cool! The city is looking out for my best interests!”
- The “preferred rent” is not subject to the 1, 2, 3, or whatever percentage-point increases that activists and landlords fight over every year to great fanfare in the local media. As long as I’m still paying less than the “legal rent”, my landlord can raise the “preferred rent” however much they feel like. And boy, did they ever—by a hundred or more dollars every year. “Well, at least I’m not paying outrageous market rents!”
Update: this section of the law was struck out by Uncle Bill a couple years ago, because Bill is such a huge champion of the poor and downtrodden like me. Additionally, this being a Progressive administration, he’s managed to cajole the Top. Men. who decide these things to set the annual rent increase at 0% for the last two years. Thus, I have had no increase since 2018. Thanks, Bill!
- So back to that relief I feel becuase I’m not paying market rent. *googles* Oh, shit—I’m paying more than the market rents in this neighborhood. Way more. It makes me wonder out of which orifice the city is pulling their “legal rents”. Is my building really that much nicer than other buildings around me? I walk around a lot and by the looks of it I would have to answer “No” to that question. *Grumbles.*
Update: With the plague lowering rents in more crowded nabes like mine, I’m getting socked even harder than before. “Gosh, I just need to move!” Well, now that I’m employed again since the latter part of the wonderful year that was 2020 that’s certainly something to think about.
- The cost of any improvements—including structural enhancements, such as exterior brick work which was in progress when I moved in, or new kitchen appliances that were provided also upon my arrival, are tacked on extra, amortized over a year or so. “But wait a minute! Didn’t every other landlord I’ve ever had include these sorts of costs in the rent?”
- Five dollars a month per window air-conditioning unit. “Oh, come on!!” This doesn’t include the air conditioner in my living room that they forced me to remove becuase “it’s blocking the fire escape”. Well… no, it wasn’t. Also, thank you for not telling me about that when I signed the lease.
- There are a lot of old folks here—surely I could benefit from their wisdom? Why, one of them snorted at me one day, “I’ve been here forty years—I can’t imagine what you’re paying!” He must have been telling me something wise. Something along the lines of “aren’t you happy to be subsidizing my rent?” Because another one of the happy benefits of rent stabilization is the support of lower rents for older people by younger people like me. I mean, it’s not like I would want them kicked out on to the street and eating cat food or anything.
- By the way, there is still another part of rent law on the books called “rent control”, but it only applies under very strict circumstances, based on age of building and length of residence or something. Perhaps my friend up there benefits from it. This part of the law is the source of all those crazy tales you hear about wealthy Hollywood types renting a spread for three hundred bucks a month, families passing their apartments down to their kids generation after generation, and such. The number of these “rent controlled” apartments is said to be tiny and shrinking every year, because of reforms which did away with some of the more batshit-insane aspects of the law.
With all these benefits of rent stabilization, I could kick myself for not taking advantage of it years earlier!
Another part of the law is so-called “destabilization”. This happens under two conditions. The first is when you don’t pay attention to limiting your income and it gets too high, and suddenly you find yourself looking at a lease with a proposed rent that reflects whatever the landlord thinks he can get. This form of destabilization is based on your yearly income—presumably, some lackey in the bowels of a state office building in Albany is tasked with scouring state tax returns, looking for anyone who makes too much money—and wouldn’t you know it but Uncle Andy and every previous governor since the housing emergency started 75 years ago has seen fit to keep pace with inflation and thereby keep the game going. I make a decent if not earth-shattering income, well above the median for this city, and I would have crossed the limit a few years ago if Andy didn’t have my back.
The second form of destabilization kicks in when your too-damn-high rent gets even more too damn high. The assumption being that if you’re still throwing that much money at your landlord, you must be willing and able to throw even more at him or her or them. Andy’s been keeping an eye on this figure too—he recently raised the threshold such that, once again, I’m comfortably under the limit. Whew!
Finally, speaking of housing emergencies… one might be alarmed to learn that all this good stuff goes away when the city’s vacancy rate rises above five percent. It’s hard to believe that that has never happened since the middle of the last century, but who am I to argue with the city’s figures? Perhaps the plague will do what, say, the exodus of over one million people during the seventies didn’t and put an end to rent control in New York City. Or Andy (or the legislature) will just say “nuh uh” and declare that clause null and void. Because that’s how we roll in “the new normal”.
NYC rent laws are a Rube Goldberg machine. I can’t believe what you described.
What a tangled web we weave…
I had a buddy who had an apartment in Santa Monica. They have similar bullshit there. He still had his Apt. 15 years later, although it was sub’d out twice. He paid his rent in the valley off the profit, and the middleman must have made enough to stay with it too. Poor suckers who rent it are going broke.
By “sub’d out twice” I mean, he sub’s it to a guy who then sub’s it to the people who live there.
I think that’s what I had in Chelsea (Manhattan) and IIRC it’s totally not legal per THE LAWS.
Yeah, I decided a few years ago I’m never putting up with this again. Recall that none of this applies to any building with less than six units and there are many, many of those in my neighborhood should I decide to hang around the area.
What a hassle, nice write up!
How in the fuck do you even navigate that? Jeezus.
And did you use a rental agent when you were in the market? A friend lived in NYC (Woodside Queens) for a few years and she had decent rent on a middling one-bedroom. I actually really liked her neighborhood. It was kind of pre-hipster. There were tons of Irish bricklayers around.
“There were tons of Irish bricklayers around.”
???
Is that a euphemism? Or were there 200 100 lbs. bricklayers of Irish descent?
Ireland Irish. Layin bricks by day, drinkin in the pubs by night. Could have been 200 of em, but they all weighed more than 100lb. HAR!
Layin’ bricks by day, layin’ pipe at night!
Not that I would know anything about that… 😉
*adds “Woodside” to my list of next places to look at*
Keep in mind, she lived there in the early 2000s. It could be full hipster by now.
Nah. I’m familiar with the area. It’s one of those neighborhoods that’s impervious to hipsters.
That’s good news!
Darnit. I got this full sleeve Koi tattoo and skinny jeans for nothin’.
*Rips up rental contract*
My Saturday Night Fever flat was Craigslist. My current boring tower apartment was through a broker.
But yeah, I like this neighborhood because it’s been pre-hipster for the last 12 years but still just convenient enough to get to Manhattan easily back when that was a thing.
OT:
Ted Wheeler of Portland may be in trouble .
That made me smile.
Sounds like he needs some crew manned machine guns to stop the maskless phone videographers.
Buried in there is his dining companion is a formerly disgraced ex-mayor, liar, and statutory rapist. Who is being rehabilitated for a return to political life.
What can’t Portland do?
Sam Adams isn’t the only former mayor statutory rapist either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Goldschmidt
Minor city mayor made Secretary of Transportation. Sounds familiar…
This sounds like a nightmare for both tenants and landlords.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it but I might be dumb.
Heres a land contract
Hers my down payment
Heres the title
Too simple
This.
“I wound up in a nice tenement just off 6th Avenue in Chelsea. ”
GAY
Chelsea is so not gay anymore. I saw so many strollers I thought I was in fucking Park Slope.
Park Slope used to be full of lesbians, walking dogs.
EV or GTFO
EV???
Being the son of a slum lord in a college town I can relate to keeping rents low to keep good stable renters. That was a less regulated market though.
This is a college town (U of MN_Doloot, ST. Sch0olastica, and Lake Inferior College). I am often amused by the ravings of the dumbasses who buy houses close to the colleges and then discover that their neighbors are college students who like to drink, play loud music, not shovel their sidewalks, and fuck in their backyards.
Wasted State College (Numerous name changes over the years), Gunnison CO (motto: Ski Crested Butte and get a degree in your spare time) is my childhood reference. Same behavior from college students for decades so I am not sure how someone could be surprised when they buy property in a college town next to students.
I’m almost ashamed of some of our behavior in the student ghetto apartments I’ve lived in.
almost
Yeah, there is a reason my wife and I live one town over. Not only is a comparable property 100k cheaper, but no drunk college kids running around screaming and canceling each other. Win. Win.
I have thought about buying a cheap house next to campus and taking advantage of silly college students (and their parents money). Then I remember a cow-orker who did just that and got screwed over royally. Perhaps it is not worth my time.
We have a rental house in the college town, but its priced to attract profs or admin, so it is a bit of a cash cow for us.
? I didn’t know my first article was up tonite, but happy to finally get it out the door.
Thanks for the article Rhy!
Yeah, thanks. It’s always something when Los Angeles is slightly freer than any other place!
What’s crazy about Los Angeles is that an apartment doesn’t come with a fridge. We had to buy one. That’s not how it works in other places.
Thanks Rhy, I enjoyed learning some of the details.
Your sarc is the perfect level of just possibly sincere. Nice.
Seems it would be difficult to navigate even if you came in well-informed about the “system”.
Good write-up of a crap adventure.
Similar things are afoot in Stockholm, only there, the state OWNS all the flats, so the possession of a direct lease from the gubmint is a prize beyond all others, and tends to be passed down through the family line over the decades.
All others are a sublease of a sublease of a sublease…many flats have been divided with remodeling of dubious legality so that they can be let to more than one family unit or individual.
Hawaii has a large large number of small “Ohana” apartments aka “Mother-in-law” apartments which are a critical part of the market. The state has been screwing over landlords since the start of the Panicdemic with the usual tenant waivers in 2020. And has used landlords seeking relief as a means to squeeze them for back taxes since they didn’t admit they were landlords before Kung Flu. Luckily when all this started the space in my house that could be used for an ohana unit was empty. The state’s actions has ensured that this unit will never go on the market.
My story of renting in NYC was quite typical really. After the required luge lessons and meat helmets I got a place by Trinity Church. After a year the building went condo. I turned down the “insiders deal” of paying $1.4M for 860 sq feet and moved to a place nearby. After I returned from Iraq in December 2008 the landlord was going to raise my rent by 42% so I quickly sub-let a place in Greenwich Village for the last six months before I was PCS’ed. I was in a basement that stayed warm as a sauna from being near the building furnace. The tranny bar near my gate provided a security force once the “ladies” found out I was not going to hassle them. I only met the landlord when I moved out and he cleared me saying, “I thought I rented to a female Kim. Guess not. The place looks fine. Where are the keys?”
Um, that story has nothing in it that I would call “typical”.
That’s my thought.
Typical is, “I looked at a place, I liked it, filled out an application, and then moved in and had modest raises in rent every year until I left.”
When we moved to the Bluegrass in 03, we paid $622 a month for a 1 bedroom (with an office)/1.5 bath with a massive bedroom and washer/dryer. Our second year the rent was $639 a month.
LOL nice
+1 Dr. Evil
I wound up in a nice tenement just off 6th Avenue in Chelsea.
You can’t trust anything named after a Clinton.
That’s why I don’t open my “bills”!
Don’t even get me started on Sir Edmund.
I don’t want to think about Chelsea’s “6th Avenue”
Why didn’t you move on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky, Honky?
Sherman Hemsley was a big fan of progressive rock. He was also apparently a big fan of cocaine.
See my brain remembers trivia like THAT, but birthdays, anniversaries? Nah.
The featured pic was just a tease, unfortunately.
I would like to say “nice write-up,” but I don’t really understand that labyrinth. It’s so … labyrinthine.
And not in the good kind of David Bowie’s cod way, either.
Rent control = oubliette
Well done!
Do you think that was the director or costume designer, or did he just show up to the shoot wearing that?
Does it matter?
https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/1353748278538604546
So Rich Lowry is smoking Rich Lowry’s weed.
Lowry’s an idiot so I’m assuming I can skip that.
Did any of that happen? I have a hard time believing that since that is the first I have heard of it.
Ransacking- I’d have to say yes. Murdering – An officer did die though there are question about how. Shouting – I don’t know about that, but there is video of the crowd dragging a cop down the steps and beating him and photos of another cop being crushed by the mob. I’d rate these claims as “mostly plausible”.
Huh thats the first I heard of that..help a brother out to those articles/photos/video?
Crowd beating cop
Cop getting crushed
Thanks.
When I used to live in apartments in the Atlanta suburbs, I noticed that they had a similar scheme, completely unrelated to any kind of rent control.
They would raise your rent every year by an amount just less than what it would cost you to move. So your rent goes up $100 a month. But it’s going to cost you more than $1,200 to move all of your crap. So you hang on for a couple of years until you finally are forced to move because now it is $2,500 cheaper to live somewhere else and you can move for less than $1,500.
It was a royal pain in the butt.
Just when I figured the game out, apartments started selling out to either become condos or to be torn down for new developments. So the last two apartments we had were not remotely interested in negotiating rates because they were trying to drive everyone out.
See, where I come from, the word “tenement” does not go with the word “nice.”
NYC confuses the Hell out of me.
If there aren’t cockroaches roaming the halls or drug dealers hanging out in the lobby, it’s “nice”.
Fortunately I never had to rent in a really big city. I rented from the same landlord in St Paul for 7 years, I can’t remember the rent but it was fair. I moved from an apartment building he owned to the walk out basement of a house across the street with a garage. One needs a garage in St Paul winters, though the apartment had a plug in if you got in the front row parking next to the building, which I rarely did.
Then the caretaker moved in upstairs in the house, perfect, never a heat or plumbing problem because it would effect him as well. They were sad to see us leave, always on time with the rent, never complained, 2 adults, no partying. I was still glad to leave when I retired.
Regulations, subsidies, and programs to “help” the poor sure are convoluted. Ohio & Columbus sure do seem to have a lot of programs to help the poor. Rent/Mortgage Assistance, Utility assistance, obviously food stamps, etc.
Having lost my job due to covid, I took the time to look into a few of them. Some of them are quite complicated to figure out if you qualify and/or how to apply. Not complicated to me per se, someone that can read and complete forms/paperwork competently, but I consider those are truly improvised and those are just lazy. They must struggle to figure all this out. Of course, since I don’t have children, I never meet the income thresholds to quality. (Don’t even get me started on Federal Earned Income Tax Credit!) Income too low to be rich and too high to be poor.
Enter the SOCIAL WORK PROGRAMS! Just call up your local taxpayer funded social program and they’ll help you right along to fill out all the forms, and I’m sure that they don’t help applicants “fudge” the numbers, or provide tips to get the most.
Alas, these enormous FedGov spending bills seem to contain billions that the State can allocate independtly. So OF COURSE Governor provides hundreds of millions to the Big Cities which in turn then funnel that money right back into said Social Work Programs. And VOILA – Citizens bribed with money stolen from everyone to vote blue! LOOK HOW MUCH WE HELPED THE POOR!
It’s almost like those programs are designed to keep them poor, or at least convince them that staying poor is in their best interest.
Gotta pave that road to hell.
That road is not paved with GOOD intentions.
It should be “a road to hell is paved with good intentions”. There are plenty of roads to hell paved with bad intentions.
the common people make good cobblestones
You can get a nice, clean one bedroom in a safe neighborhood 20 minutes from Shinjuku (downtown Tokyo) for a grand/mo. NY rent situation sounds insane to me.
I have a feeling “Japan Safe” is very different than “NYC Safe”
They tend to slaughter every foreigner every 100 years or so. Figure I got 20 years or so safe.
My neighborhood is about as safe as it gets in NYC outside some of the more suburby neighborhoods farther away. TBH, I chalk it up to a couple things – it’s mostly immigrants from the Middle East and China, and it’s sort of “ignored” by the rest of the city despite being pretty ideal to hipsterize at any time – very dense, convenient to Manhattan, etc.
Do they have all these regs to “help” people over there?
Not anywhere near NY’s level.
Nice.
When we visited family after the Kobe earthquake (’95), we also visited friends in the temporary housing that the govt had thrown up. It was rows upon rows of what were basically tin shacks.
It sure didn’t look like there were any regulations or building codes that had gone into them. People were crammed in everywhere. When we visited again 2 years later they were almost all gone.
I’m pretty sure the austere nature of the housing was the “help” that the govt provided to the people to get out of there.
The reaction of local peoples to a natural disaster (or even an unnatural one, such as war) is very telling.
In Nicaragua. where there had been an earthquake 10 years earlier in Managua (the capital) there were still piles of rubble lying around in streets or in what had been property lots. The people just left it there, expecting that the gubmint would clear it out for them.
In societies with a little pride and can-do, the people at least clear up the mess even if they can’t build the replacements themselves.
Is this apartment larger than a coffin?
For the same price? Bigger than what you’d get in NY.
Don’t knock the capsule hotels.
When I was working in Tokyo, my company would have paid for a regular hotel (a fancy one no less), but I hated staying there. I wasn’t rich enough to drink in the bar and socialize with anyone, so I’d just go back to my room and be bored and lonely.
One night, all the rooms at the regular hotels were booked for some reason and I ended up at a capsule hotel (they are the ones where you sleep in a glorified coffin).
It was great. Once you check in there is a communal shower area with a hot whirlpool and sauna. They also have a room where you can watch sports on a big screen hotel while drinking a beer you bought from a vending machine. Only at the end of the night do you go upstairs and crawl into your capsule.
So instead of being isolated and lonely, you can hang out with a bunch of drunk Japanese salarymen who missed the last train home and argue about sports.
I thought it was way better, but all my Japanese coworkers were amazed/appalled that I preferred to stay there.
*I bribed a front desk worker at a near by full service hotel to hold all my clothes and do my laundry, so storage wasn’t a problem for me.
I had a similar experience on a train from Chicago to NYC versus flying. Yeah it took longer but I played cards with fun strangers in the dining car while getting shitfaced.
When I was coming off leave to go to Okinawa, I did a similar train trip from Minnesoda to Oceanside, CA. Like you said, it was a lot of fun chatting with strangers and leisurely drinking your way across the country.
The one time I walked into a capsule hotel the guy smiled. “You too tall.” I walked home.
Can even a gaijin get that apartment?
When I went to Tokyo in ’98 my company was supposed to get my wife and I an apartment in Tokyo. Of course, being as dysfunctional as they were, when we showed up, they hadn’t yet gotten the apartment.
When a coworker and I went apartment shopping a lot of the landlords wouldn’t rent to a foreigner or wanted me to jump through a lot of hoops (like being fingerprinted). My coworker was pretty upset at the discrimination.
In the end I stashed my wife and kids down in Kobe with her sister and I stayed in hotels during the week and took the shinkansen to Kobe on the weekends. It was worked out well for everyone.
I really started enjoying the week days in Tokyo once I discovered the capsule hotels.
My first experiences with the rental agencies were rife with discrimination. Nowadays, it’s completely different. At least in the big cities.
Same thing happened to me in Pheonix in the early nineties. My buddy and I looked high and low, nothing. Finally got to tour a real dump, right downtown with crack dealers working the sidewalk right across the street. The place had no a/c and actual holes in the drywall. The landlord turned us down because, ” your motorcycles might offend the neighbors”! They acted like every job and every rental was super serious and demanded crazy bona fides for entry.
I am confused but enjoyed the reading of what I assume was an incantation of some sort.
I visited New York eight years ago to help a friend pack and move out after she graduated. She was living on York Avenue somewhere in the 80s, I think. She made me promise two things: I wouldn’t sleep with her roommate, and I wouldn’t make fun of the size of their apartment. I broke one of those promises in thirty seconds.
How long did it take to break the second one?
How long did it take to break the other?
Good move waiting to make fun of the size of something til after you slept with the roommate.
Here’s the floor plan as best I remember, though it seems roomy without any of the furniture.
LOL
Did it have a toiletsink? It not officially laughably small until it has a toiletsink
Hehe.
Trust you didn’t knock her up.
Funny part is York Avenue is probably one of the roomier places you can get in Manhattan, unless you go up to Harlem or Washington Heights. I had one of the bigger one bedrooms in NYC that I’ve run across in the low 70s on York. And I paid through the nose for it. Now that I’m out of there, I realize how small it really was.
The “bedroom” in my last place in NYC was as wide as my queen mattress and 18 inches longer. The mattress literally was wall to wall and a small space to scoot along the foot. To make the bed I had to open the closet so I would have room to work.
My bathroom was a bit larger than on a typical 30 foot yacht. On the opposite side of the living room wall and hall to the bathroom was the building furnace.
It was Manhattan cheap, and I was only there for six months (less almost 6 weeks on temporary duty and three weeks vacationing in Italy). One one of my last weekends there the annual “Pride Parade” ended a block away. That was a party weekend.
My place was a bigger than that. And UES, paradoxically, is actually one of Manhattan’s cheaper neighborhoods. And my place wasn’t cheap (I paid almost double in rent what I’m paying all-in for a mortgage on a four-bedroom house with a FROG and pool and 3 1/4 acres of land). Even a lot of people I knew in New York raised eyebrows on the rent.
But, yeah, unless you agree to “bend over and grease up”, you’re not getting space at all in NYC.
My current place is pretty roomy by NYC standards. The superintendress asked upon encountering me on move-in day, “why you rent so big place?” I had just broken up with someone and had visions of not being single forever, lol. Plus the two cats.
HAH! You didn’t know it, but she made her roommate promise to not make fun of the “size” of her moving help!
How big was the roommate?
Good article. I wasn’t so lucky to ever get in on the “rent stabilization” bandwagon. More power to you if you can get in on it.
If memory serves me, you’re in Bay Ridge. Honestly, I didn’t know they had rent stabilized places. Back when I lived there, it was still pretty affordable, anyway.
The bandwagon sucks for reasons I mentioned above – mostly, it’s more expensive than just finding a not-stabilized place in, say, the building across the street.
Fair enough. Like I said, Bay Ridge, at least when I was there, was one of the more affordable neighborhoods in New York, though. Even without rent control. Like you suggested, the rent increases I saw, even when the place wasn’t stabilized, were trivial.
Yeah, outside the tower blocks it’s mostly mom’n’pop landlords who prize stability and charge accordingly.
Bay Ridge is a nice area. There are some beautiful homes and the irony of the St Patrick’s Parish in the old Italian neighborhood.
I went to the Italian place near the last bus stop before the Bridge that was notorious for a mob hit on some mid level capo. He survived the initial shooting and they loaded him onto the ambulance. Even though the hospital is within sight of the restaurant it took an hour for him to get to the emergency room and he died en route.
I worked at Ft Wadsworth and went to Ft Hamilton at least monthly to buy groceries and run the automobile to charge up the battery.
Taking the R to N to transfer to the 4-5-6 to home was always interesting.
There are gigantic mansions perched on almost-cliffs within ten minute’s walk of me. Just a few remnants of what the neighborhood was like a hundred years ago.
That was a question I had, dbl. You answered it.
Thx rhy. A nice perspective from Lived Expterience.
Once read an article about rent control causing housing shortages and some Swedish economist ( I think) said (paraphrasing)
“The two surest ways of destroying a city’s housing stock are rent control ad airial bombardment.”
…and zoning laws…
The new hotness that is going to destroy NYC’s housing stock is the rent abatements. I read that some huge percentage of us haven’t paid any rent in ten months.
Honestly, I wouldn’t touch NY residential as an investment category unless it was at the luxury category. That’s what I think the authorities don’t get about it. They whine that nobody wants to build affordable housing in NYC. But, they target anyone renting out to anyone who isn’t rich for a royal screwing. Serving the top of the market is really the only way you have a chance at a predictable investment.
Yep, all the new housing is luxury + “affordable” set-asides. I wouldn’t rent in such a place if you paid me.
+1 poor door
And… the hidden upside of much of the rent regulations I described above is the same thing – subsidies for “the old” who are assumed to be “the poor”.
Sandmann has fired Wood, going to be interesting to see how the MAGA crowd parse this.
What’s to parse? I’m sure the majority of “the MAGA crowd” that pay any attention to that are keenly aware that Lin Wood went caca for coocoo puffs.
Eh. Hype is just baitin.
I’m not even on camera.
They see me toobin’
They hating
Patrolling and trying to catch me zooming dirty
Tryna catch me zooming dirty…
Well, it seems like both Wood and Powell started strong and went a little wacky towards the end. AT least, I think so. All I have to base that on is the people who “report” the “news” and dogs know they lie more than they breathe.
Powell went a little wacky. Wood went waaaaay past that. He’s gone fucking nuts.
RussianNorth KoreanChinese agents stabbed them with umbrella-syringes full of crazychok agent, say reliable sources.Hope he didn’t smirk while he did it.
He can smirk. He’s free as fuck! *flashes OK symbol*
The gook is laughing at you.
Holy shit. You see the way his brains came out?
On top of all the other horrors of the big urban hell, such a Byzantine rental situation is something I wish to stay far far away from.
Almost makes one pine for a modestly priced townhouse in an HOA community with Karen and her girlfriends nosing about.
They just need some good lovin’.
One of the pluses of living in NYC is few nosy neighbors. To live so crowded you have to kind of ignore your neighbors unless you choose otherwise.
The biggest plus is people take care of business and then get the hell out of the way. Around here, they amble about and have long conversations about GMO’s and paleo diets at the front of the line while we tap our toes behind them. Its even worse now with the legal weed.
For fun I googled “inauguration unity” for Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. They all are full of shit. Trump was more openly hostile, but most of them did the vapid, “There’s not blue or red America” nonsense. Fuck that. Attempt to crush your enemies when you win or at least be honest and say that’s what you want to do.
The first place my wife and I lived in was a tiny (shitty) two bedroom townhouse near Memphis State. The apartment started at $250/mo. We moved out 2 years later because they tried to raise the rate to $315/mo. Also didn’t help that all our neighbors had been burgled at one time or another. I always wondered who the burglar was that I had inadvertently gotten on their good side.
We move to an entire 3 br house in a much nicer neighborhood for $375. We rented out both the other bedrooms and I think we only paid $175/mo.
We went back for a buddy’s wedding 15 years ago and were amazed at how small and rundown the apartment and the house looked. We thought both of them were fine and dandy when we lived there.
Maybe your wife was the burglar?
A pussy burglar? Well she sure didn’t cut me in on any loot.
https://youtu.be/tfaGwgtN9Sc
That pic of Cuomo is insane.
My sister couldnt find me a place that took pets show she looked for places to buy, turns out to be cheaper than rent, credit is t an issue, down payments are cheap.
Sorry.
https://mobile.twitter.com/GSlackjaw/status/1352798439382257665
I too don’t like it when white men are in Asian markets. Even if forced to at gunpoint by their wives.
Trips to the Asian market with my wife were the worst. If it wasn’t trying to deal with a bunch of aggressive Korean women slamming carts down tiny aisles it was the insanity of how shelves/freezers were stocked (or maybe the lack of a plan). Shit would be thrown into a freezer and you were supposed to paw through a ton of frozen creepy sea creatures until you found the stuff you were looking for.
I finally told my wife that the stock boys would lug the 50lb sacks of rice out to her car for her. She didn’t need me for the grunt work.
I too don’t like it when white men are in Asian markets.
Yeah, that’s the worst!
*hides 99 Ranch receipt*
I had a buddy who wanted to make authentic shabu shabu and got my wife and her buddy to bring him out shopping for ingredients.
It was pretty amazing to watch this poor farm kid from Iowa get his first taste of shopping in a Korean market. He’s 6′ 3″ and 270 and was getting pushed around like a pinball by a horde of 5′ 100lb Korean women. He kept trying to politely get out of their way as they all pushed by him.
That’s why I bring the 3 year old. They’re aggressive, but they won’t run a little kid over.
You hope.
No, Koreans may be crazy, but no one spoils kids more.
A toddler could wander around a Korean market without a problem. The Korean broad that would run your foot over with her cart without blinking an eye will not only stop for a kid, but will pinch their cheek or muss their hair and say nice things to them.
It was a mixed blessing for our kids. If they were near me, the Korean women would work extra hard to get a look at our little half breeds. And since (thanks to my wife) they were pretty cute, the women would really go nuts pinching and touching them.
Our kids were pretty good about it for trips to the market. On trips to Korea, though, where it happened everywhere all day long, they got pretty twitchy.
Where am I supposed to go shopping? On the base?
Send the wife.
Empower her to do all the shopping on her own. Quit being such a controlling shitlord.
Her questioning why I didn’t buy X brand instead of Y brand tofu is what holds our marriage together.
It was a great day when we had our second kid and instead of shopping as a family, I’d stay home with the kids while she shopped.
I don’t know how many years I took off my teeth due to me grating them when we shopped together.
The number one gripe was that she would randomly walk around the store buying things as she thought of them, instead of walking up and down each aisle in an orderly manner and getting things as they were stocked.
Things are so much better now that she shops alone. And truth be told, I’m probably the more picky shopper than she is. If anyone complains about the wrong brand being bought, it will be me.
Alone is better for sure. “After this supermarket we’re going to the other supermarket across town because toilet paper is 50 cents cheaper there.”
? ?
https://twitter.com/AaronParseghian/status/1353848321559982082?s=20
Step 1: Dems howl and throw shit about the impropriety of Trump inventing made up title
Step 2: Dems begin impeachment charges against Trump for bringing dishonor to made up title.
the comments LOL ?
I like that the first comment is by Bitch Prattle.
That’s as dumb as the Office of the President Elect.
I had the same thought. I’m sure those same people were outraged by that as well. Right?
I like it. Figure he’s trolling
lol
I assume the main purpose is to troll.
How was I not familiar with Goodhart’s Law before now? It succinctly explains my thoughts on Covid statistics.
Founder of #WalkAway Movement, Brandon Straka, Arrested For Participation in Capitol Hill Riot
“ During his speech the day before the riot, Straka referred to the audience as “patriots” and referred repeatedly to a “revolution,” Desor said.”
I see the problem. He should’ve said “comrades” rather than “patriots”.
Uffda. Those guys are really taking their team loyalty too far.
Patriots vs. Stealers
Good write up Rhy. The NYC rent laws are more convoluted than the shit we have here In SF, but they both cause similar shitty outcomes. Here the magic year is 1977, if your building was built before that year then it falls under rent control, which means that whatever you rent it for it can only be increased by a percentage of the CPI every year. So if your tenant moves or dies or gets evicted then it goes back to market rate. It’s another young subsidizing the old situation essentially, or more recent arrivals subsidizing the long timers if you prefer. Rent control is not even the worst regulation here in regards to housing, there are many others that contribute to this place being as expensive as possible to live. Right now we are seeing a massive exodus, which should lead to interesting times ahead.
Right now we are seeing a massive exodus,
I see cars with California plates almost every time I leave the house. More than Oklahoma (40 miles away), Arkansas (120 miles away), and Louisiana (150 miles away) combined. Knowing the companies that moved into this area, these are all Californians from SF and the south bay.
Fine by me. I’m hoping for the overheated markets in places like NYC and SF to calm back down to something more like historical norms. I like where I live and I would like it better if it got cheaper.
I like where I live and I would like it better if it got cheaper.
You and me both. We bought our first house here back in 2013 as the market was still kinda recovering. At least for the north Dallas suburbs, it has been nothing but insanely hot housing market since then. The house that we bought for $210k in 2013 is now estimated at over $350k. Thankfully, we realized half of that when we sold in 2016, but that’s not a $350k house in any sane market.
Resultantly, we wait and rent, hoping for the housing bubble to pop sometime in the next couple years so that we can jump on a deal.
Make them wipe their feet extra hard before entering the house.
Most of them aren’t from here originally, this was their way station for a while after college as they moved up the workforce.
Boston/Massachusetts continues to exceed low expectations – rent control is forbidden by state law.
Idiots are dying to have that overturned, of course.
I’m genuinely surprised proggy local pols haven’t gotten to it.
#metoo
Could be that Boston isn’t big enough size-wise to rule the state the way NYC is.
Oh, they’re pushing. Our preening douche of a mayor is all in.
It’s to be magic “21st century rent
controlstabilization<", not that bad old 20th century rent control that we know makes things worse.Gah, bolloxed-up that tag.
So not worse that how rent control screws up markets?
I see they’re managing to try every other trick in the book to transfer that wealth upwards. How caring of them.
CWAA.
My aunt (and, currently, my cousin) live in a gigantic rent-controlled place in Peter Cooper Village in the Lower East Side.
I think it’s still something like $1,200 for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath that has to be close to 1,500 sq. ft.
I don’t like those giant complexes like Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant – too far to walk to shopping and stuff. I prefer the older neighborhoods of mixed housing and shopping.
There’s a Trader Joe’s right there, with a few other things near by. Plus, an Ess-A-Bagel, so what else do you need?
My cousin grew up there – my aunt (and my uncle, before he passed) has to have lived there since the 60’s. Not a bad place for being right in Manhattan – bunch of parks, playgrounds, etc.
Granted, he failed out of 4 different high schools, since he was playing hockey at Sky Rink at 3 AM during the week (cheap ice), then going for beers afterward (drinking age be damned). But I don’t think we can blame that particular apartment.
On my first multiday train trip (Chicago to Oakland), some of the other passengers told me “You’ll like Train People. You don’t have to worry about theft or anything.”
It was true, at least for people who’d paid for sleeper cars.
I have no idea why this didn’t turn out as a reply to the train convo above.
You may carry on with ignoring my stupidity.
As you were…
Reality is starting to set in
https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/google-alphabet-is-shutting-down-loon-internet/
Are you saying that idea was full of hot air?
Only took them nine years to figure out what a back of the napkin calculation would have told them was a losing business model
When I was a kid, I always wanted to move to NYC. I was born on Long Island, and ever since we moved to VA when I was in elementary school, I wanted to go back to NY. The Yankees and the Rangers were there. Good bagels and black and white cookies, which I only got when my grandparents came down to visit. Real pizza. People who could pronounce my Italian last name. When I was done with college, my girlfriend at the time wanted to go to LA instead, so I moved there instead (which she never actually did, but that’s another story). The dream was dead.
Now? I’d never move there on a bet. I discovered in LA that I don’t actually like living in big cities.
So, you were not, in fact, Walkin’ Here.