Housing: Apartments in NYC/Manhattan

[BW]

Thought this might be of interest to some who are looking for a place to live in NYC... From today's NY Times by Janny Scott: Out of College, but Now Living in Urban Dorms.

 

Although I don't think there's a specific website address given there is quite a bit of information about this particular apartment complex in Harlem as it's listed on Craigslist...so my bet is that you'd recognize it.

Ms. Cook, age 24 and from Ohio, at first could afford only a rented room in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., for $650 a month...

Then she saw an ad on Craigslist for space in a 60-unit building in Harlem described as full of young professionals. The price was right; the woman on the phone was friendly. Back in Ohio, Ms. Cook’s mother had begun to think like a New Yorker: “Yeah, right, Kelly. She’s probably some mass murderer. I don’t trust her. She’s too nice.”

 

This month, Ms. Cook is moving in. The woman on the phone, Karen Falcon (not a mass murderer), calls the building “a dorm for adults.” It is a community of the overeducated and underpaid.

 

There is nothing new about having roommates in New York City. What Ms. Falcon has invented is a full-service dorm, full of strangers she has brought together to share big apartments as a way to keep housing costs down. Her approach is a homegrown response to the soaring rents bedeviling desirable cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

 

Ms. Falcon, an informal agent for the building’s owner, says she has placed nearly 150 young people there and in two other buildings in the neighborhood in recent years. A gregarious Californian with rainbow-colored braids, she pieces together roommate groups like puzzles. Each tenant ends up paying $700 to $1,200 a month...

[ashatNYU]

My friend used to live in a similar housing situation on St. Marks Place. I did not like the vibe of the place, there were a lot of comings and goings. But the place described in the article does not sound so bad.