Via Town & Village

There's never a dull moment in Stuy Town. If you walked by Playground 12 about an hour ago you were privy to Stuy Town's security in in-action! 

"When I walked by the girl with the pot belly and ripped jeans was screaming profanity at another woman in the playground. Her husband / boyfriend did everything he could to contain his beastly girlfriend including attempting to cover her mouth at one point and hold her back but there was no stopping her. After about ten minutes the resident on the receiving end of the verbal abuse was starting to leave with her kids. 

One of the many people standing around watching the fight made the mistake of yelling at the crazy girl, "go back to the projects!" At that point her boyfriend hopped the fence and proceeded to pick a fight with the older man in the truckers cap who suggested they get lost. Security was nowhere until a few people on cell phones called in the fight. The boyfriend claimed to be NYPD, it was pretty obvious he wasn't. Security finally showed up and threw them out."

Via The New York Observer

Via New York Post

So you've taken the tour of Stuyvesant Town, fell in love with the spacious living room, and were told by the leasing agents you can divide the living room into an extra bedroom. Oh, no worries, they tell you. You and your roommate will still have enough useful space left over for a living room.

Welcome to your new living room, a dark and narrow hallway reminiscent of the meandering Kowloon Walled City. A Stuy Town resident snapped a photo of an actual Stuy Town apartment with the pressure wall you'll be shelling out $1,200+ for. No light. No air circulation. No heat. No AC. Now you know why the leasing agents are afraid to show them to you.

Via NY Times

Rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments carry mythic significance to New Yorkers starved for space. These are the high-ceiling homes featured in Woody Allen movies. There were deals secured by celebrities like Carly Simon, Cyndi Lauper and Ed Koch.

They are the reason that Monica in "Friends" was able to afford her apartment on a chef's salary.

Of course, Monica is a fictional character, but legendary, awe-inspiring, teeth-clenching deals still do exist. An informal survey of some major landlords and real estate agencies turned up an Upper East Side woman paying $156.20 for two conjoined studios, a Lower East Side man paying $60 a month for a walk-up and the octogenarians and nonagenarians sprinkled through Little Italy paying $58 to $102 a month.

Most of these tenants with time-warped rents declined to be interviewed, because of the hate mail they believed they would receive. But one such tenant did agree to go on the record, and he wants his fellow New Yorkers to know that he has not been able to keep his cheap apartment without a long fight.

He is John Burke, a 65-year-old paying $288 a month for a studio at 218 East 84th Street. As the last rent-stabilized dweller in a five-story walk-up, Mr. Burke is living in a construction site where the latest landlord is renovating all the other studios and charging $1,850 to $1,975 a month. Mr. Burke says he has spent $13,500 to repair his dilapidated apartment, and $11,000 on legal fees taking his landlords to court over the conditions.

He is waiting for his current landlord to find him a temporary apartment, make repairs and let him return home. But there are no guarantees when or if that might happen.

As Mr. Burke carefully walked through the sweltering apartment stacked to the ceiling with furniture he was waiting to move, he inhaled the unsettling scent of mold, ignored the head-splitting sawing and hammering from floors above him, and poked his dark-wood cane at rotting floorboards his landlord had not repaired. "It's been hell," he said while walking among glass shards that construction had left strewn about the backyard. "Now you see, it's no bargain."

Continue reading "Rent Control Is a Vanishing New York Treasure" @ The New York Times

It's no wonder Stuyvesant Town is using such high-pressure sales tactics to get prospective tenants to sign on the dotted line. Otherwise they run the risk of seeing the real Stuy Tow in action! This bag of festering food was left in a muggy Stuy Town hallway by a tenant too lazy to open the nearby garbage shoot and toss it in. A resident with a strong gag reflex writes:

"This morning's goodies appear to be mostly prepared frozen foods from "Spring Valley." The frozen fish dinners are smelling especially good at the moment since they are thawing out in the heat! What's wrong with these people?"

Last summer a Stuyvesant Town resident wrote to Lux Living telling us about a young man she caught defecating in the stairwell of her building. The post got a lot of attention and was even written up in New York Magazine who doubted the incident took place. So when we got wind of another Stuy Town stairwell doubling as a latrine, we wanted to see for ourselves. We did. And we instantly regretted it.

"As if it's not bad enough they show their total disregard for existing tenants by monopolizing both elevators in our building with their tours making it impossible for the us to get in or out of the building, now they are pressuring people to sign leases the same day.

I was in the elevator with one of them today and, again, I heard the leasing agent pressuring the guy she had just shown an apartment to. She told him he needed to make up his mind fast because "the apartments go in minutes!" I turned around and said, "Oh, stop it! They do NOT." The agents said something about the guy needing to lock in the price because it may not be available again and she knows because she works in the leasing office. Oh please.

So basically they are creating their own weather. They have control over the prices and how long they are good for. If they were honest they wouldn't have to make up pricing on a day to day basis to pressure people. There's no shortage of apartments in Stuyvesant Town. Minutes my ass!"

Via Town & Village