I'm getting kicked out of my apartment!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So the lady who’s been subletting me her rent-stabilized apartment for the past ten years (while she lived in a much swankier place) has decided she wants to let her daughter have it. She didn’t give me a definitive deadline to get out, and she did just take rent money for me for the month of November, but still I need a new place to live.

Okay, I’m trying very hard to look at the bright side. It was an incredibly lucky deal for the past ten years. I got to live on Manhattan’s upper east side, a mere five minute’s walk to the Met & Central Park, for astronomically (at least for Manhattan standards) cheap. True, it was in a sixth floor walk-up in a ratty, run-down tenement apartment. But hey, I was there by myself in a reasonably spacious two-bedroom apartment (she used one room as a storage room), with a great view. And frankly, I knew this would eventually happen. I should feel lucky I’ve had the run that I did.

On the other hand - I have to move!!! I barely have a pot to piss in and NYC real estate is more expensive than it’s ever been. Even the outer boroughs are exorbitantly expensive. Even with a room-mate (Crikey! I’ll have to get a room-mate!)

I’m guessing I’ll be making the inevitable trek up to Spanish Harlem / Washington Heights that so many of my gay friends are making. It seems like it’s rapidly becoming the new Chelsea (although hopefully not as pretentious & obnoxiously “FAAAABulous” as Chelsea became). Either that or Brooklyn. I’ve already done Queens (Astoria), and Jersey (Hoboken). Not again. As for Staten Island…if that’s a serious option, I may as well consider moving back to Buffalo.

I’m afraid to even look at Craigslist, and see the horror that is the going rate for apartments.

2

Hmm - I just realized that as I was reading this, the song on the radio is “Kryptonite” (3 Doors Down). :smiley:

Anyway, I feel for ya - I found out recently that I’m going to have to move too. Right now I have a great 3 bedroom townhouse in a great location and the rent is so unbelievably reasonable - and my son only has half his jr. year and his sr. year left in high school - I was hoping to stay until he finished. Looks like it will probably be next fall at the latest we’ll have to find something else. :frowning:

I wish you luck, man!

3

That’s too bad. Looking back at the few really nice NYC apartments I’ve inhabited is like a dream.

From what I’ve read, while the sales market has cooled off a little, the rental market is worse than ever.

People are being squeezed out of the building I’ve been in for 15 years, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen come May when my lease is up. It’s gotten so bad that people have formed a tenant’s group. We sort of need to get out of that apartment anyway, so we’re ambivalent about the matter at this point.

My sister lives up on 145th a couple blocks down from St. Nicholas and while there’s a lot of new construction that’s currently affordable, it’s still pretty much Harlem. “The dealers on the corner - I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.”

4

What’s wrong with Astoria? Astoria is the greatest neighborhood in the world.

5

Of course, that’s why your location reads “Brooklyn” right? :wink:

6

I don’t know that much about rent stabilization in New York but it sounds like some other schemes around the country where it stays in effect only for the original person and, once they move out, it can be deregulated. That would certainly explain the 10 year sublease. Is that the case? If so, extort her.

7

A rent stabilized apartment can pass to a family member as long as that family member has lived in the apartment for two years. If the daughter lives in the apartment for two years, doesn’t have an income exceeding $250,000 (for two years in a row or something like that) and the rent stays below $2000 a month then she can take over the rent stabilized lease. Lucky her!

8

http://www.housingmaps.com/
Craigslist meets Google Maps mashup. Helpful.

Hey, sorry to hear about your problems. I once was told I had 15 days to move out… the people I was renting from lost their home. Man. Panic.

9

And I miss Astoria every day. :frowning:

Not that I don’t like Brooklyn; I just like Astoria better. The main reason I moved down here was to buy an apartment instead of continuing to rent in Queens. (There are precious few condos in Astoria/LIC and the ones that were available were not affordable.)

So maybe I’ll move back there once my can’t-fail get-rich-quick scheme pays off. It involves borrowing against my home to buy lottery tickets and bus rides to Atlantic City.

10

Maybe you should lobby for a change in the law that somehow encourages people to construct new apartment buildings?

Like, say a government subsidy! Or a tax! Perhaps the city should condemn land and build more apartments! Some new government initiative, anyway! Something that would drive the price of rental units down to a more affordable level!

Or (and I know this sounds crazy) maybe repeal the existing New York law that creates a huge disincentive to anyone who might consider creating a new supply of rental units and let the market solve the problem?

Nahh. It’d never work.

11

In February, I was given five hours notice and they complained that I was going to take longer than that.

Speaking of, I’m going to call them right now and cause them more legal problems. Every time they open their mouths, they break another law and that resets the statute of limitation (3 years).

12

You’re right, it wouldn’t, since new construction doesn’t come under rent stabilization guidelines. It’s just expensive to build here, and there will never be enough apartments for everyone who wants to come in, at least in the near future. There’s no reason to lower rents. That’s the market.

It’s like the highway department adding a lane to an existing highway to alleviate insane traffic. You just get more insane traffic.

13

The PATH takes Metro- card and links Manhattan to both Hoboken and Jersey City. Rental prices can be lower there in some situations. (YMMV)

14

Dammit, my secret is out. I was hoping to get rich, patent it, then sell it on infomercials. Curse you, friedo!

15

It’s great to now and then hear of compassionate laws. I think we can all agree that folks trying to make ends meet on $200k per year need protection from the depradations of rapacious landlords.

16

I don’t believe I said that new apartments would be rent-stablized. Instead, I talked about disincentives (in other words, financial and other impediments) that the law imposes on people who want to redevelop residential property.

I’ll say right upfront that I am not a New York attorney and claim no special knowledge of the law. What I know comes from reading new reports.

It is my understanding that New York tenants in an existing, rent controlled (or stablized) building must, as a general rule, be offered a renewal lease. In other words, they get to stay there as long as they want.

Obviously, someone who wants to build a new 20 unit apartment building in Manhattan is going to have to buy an existing, residentially-zoned parcel of land. As there is little available farmland in town, that almost certainly means buying an existing old apartment building and tearing it down.

Old apartment buildings are almost certainly going to have rent-controlled apartments, with tenants that will have to move if the building is to be demolished, or even gutted for rehabilitation. Let’s say our hypothetical tear-down property has 10 units, 8 of which are occupied by rent-controlled tenants.

No problem, you say. The law allows such tenants to be evicted. All the landlord has to do is apply for permission from a government board.

And you’re right. Problem is, that process is hardly easy, automatic, or cheap. And it sure ain’t quick.

According to a recent news article, a New York property owner just won a major victory from a government housing board. He won the right to evict some tenants in his building, the residential part of which he is gutting. Tenant groups condemn the ruling. Happy days for New York developers?

Not really. The property owner filed its application six years ago. Last month’s ruling still requires a further four month delay before eviction action can begin. Obviously, this 7 year process has and will cost the owner lots of money in professional fees, and interest and other costs associated with the delay. And just to top it off, the landlord that won its case has to pay a further “stipend” to each tenant of $232,000 to $303,000.

Cite: http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/newsnov06/131Duane.htm

Pretty big set of disincentives to someone who wants to build new apartments, no?

17

Yeah, well the developer won anyway. Also, it’s an exceptional case or you wouldn’t have read about it.

Any significant construction here involves displacing up to hundreds of people and dozens of businesses. It takes a while. Many don’t leave so easy. Some of it winds up in court. Is it really that different anywhere else? Your “disincentives” are more a nuisance to a determined developer than anything else.

There’s a new building being built just down the hill from where I am. A tower went up across the street a couple years ago. A tower was just finished up a block away. A big building is going up on 3rd and 86th and another one a block away at Lexington and 86th. This is after a tower went up mid-block between 2nd and 3rd on 86th a few years ago. The locations may be meaningless to you, I know, but this is all within a five minute walk from where I am.

I gotta tell ya, for all the disincentives there’s a hell of a lot of building going on, and it will have zero downward effect on the rental market, I might add.

18

Yes.

7 years of delay? Millions of dollars in mandatory stipends? These are mere “nuisances”?

In your view, what would rise to the level of a “disincentive”? Maybe forced amputation of body parts?

No surprise there. If a developer has to spend many millions on litigation, professional fees, stipends and interest before he can even start his project, the result isn’t going to be affordable apartments.

“Nuisances”? Wow.

19

Depends. These amputations… anybody I like?

20

If you want to tear down a bunch of buildings and build a shiny new luxury tower on some of the most sought-after real estate on the planet, you know what? It’s going to be mind-blowingly expensive no matter how you slice it, tenants rights laws or not.

Your cited story is an extreme case. Not the norm. The projects in the Times article I linked to went from evicting tenants to demolition in relatively short order. So it goes with most of the projects around here.