wow

[ratcreature]

Looking at the Worst Room Tumblr just now (a blog that posts photos of horrible rooms and small "apartments" for rent in NYC at outrageous prices) makes me feel so much better about my place.

Also, of course I knew that fictional depictions of supposedly crappy NYC apartments in tv series and such always make them vastly larger than they would be in reality (perhaps because you couldn't actually fit a professional camera larger than an iPhone, the person operating it, and a person being filmed into an actual crappy NYC apartment from the looks of these photos so you'd probably have to stage them and leave one wall out that you don't see or something), but these are just astoundingly awful. Like, many seem to be either windowless closets rented as bedroom for several hundred dollars or some sort of crawlspaces repurposed for sleeping in, that are too low to stand or even sit.

Comments

[domarzione]

I've been following that tumblr since it started (for obvious reasons, it made the rounds early in NYC) and yeah, it boggles me. Even -- especially -- as someone who is less than a year removed from my own apartment hunting in NYC.

The punchlines to that tumblr are many. First and foremost, most of these are incredibly expensive options for substandard accommodations in trendy neighborhoods (which is not to be confused with "good" or "beautiful" neighborhoods or neighborhoods with good shopping or subway access, just trendy, especially some of the hipster loci), which means that they are betting on someone being so desperate to be cool that they'll sacrifice money and dignity to do so. These are not "the best a poor person can do" apartments. These are sucker accommodations.

(There are probably hundreds of similarly horrifying offers in non-trendy neighborhoods, but they'll be for a fraction of the price and they'll be mostly for illegal immigrants. NYC's public housing and welfare is incredibly generous -- you can apply for it the moment you cross the city line, resident or not.)

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I figured. The hipster neighborhood phenomenon drives the prices in trendy neighborhoods here as well. Not quite to this ridiculous extent, but it's the same underlying mechanism. The annoying thing is when you live in a neighborhood that is encroached by the phenomenon.

Like the neighborhood where I live borders one of the spots that have become more and more popular the last decade and one that isn't very popular for various reasons, in part because a bit further there are several high rise housing projects, that make those areas really unpopular among those who want to live in an building with "character" or such, plus there cuts an autobahn through that neighborhood, there's industry including a waste burning power plant that smells sometimes and it gets airport noise. It also has some really nice aspects, but it's generally not a first pick kind of area.

So my street is sort of inbetween the area that has become more trendy (though still not among the extreme), and that other area that has very little chance of attracting hipsters. So you get ripple effects. Like next to me there used to be all small stores on the ground floors of the buildings, but half of these have been converted to ground floor apartments now. Also they converted one old air raid shelter into an apartment complex. Air raid shelters pose some problems, because they are pretty much useless unless you are carpet bombed but they are quite expensive to tear down, what with having built to withstand so much, especially without damaging nearby buildings, otoh they are hard to convert into attractive living space too, so I guess whether it's worth investing in plots occupied by them is a gauge of how much profit can be made in an area. While I've been living here they actually tore down two of the ones nearby, converted a third (that turned into one odd looking building) but the one directly across from me still hasn't changed into anything.

[basingstoke]

There was Peter Parker's horrible room in Spider-Man 2, where they zoomed out the window to show the whole thing. But yeah, you could never put a TV show in there. I think Elementary made a nice compromise, where the brownstone probably cost millions of dollars, but Sherlock doesn't own it so they don't have to pretend he can afford it.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, the rich parents angle definitely helps with the plausibility for Elementary.

[lilacsigil]

I lived in an apartment smaller than some of those (though I could stand up!) while I was in Toyko. It was much cheaper than those, but I was also about 90 minutes away by train from Tokyo proper. It was worth it to live in Tokyo, which is what I suspect is going on with these people. Could I live my whole life there? No. Could I live a year there for the experience? Yes, and love it!

[ratcreature]

I could probably deal with having a really small room for a while if I had access to larger communal spaces, but not with having only a small room for everything and needing to go elsewhere for all things.

[thirdblindmouse]

I think that Tumblr exists to make me feel better about the Boston rental market.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. That things could be so much worse is at least something when you have to comfort yourself about awful options.

[saraht]

For the record, it's a violation of the NYC housing code to rent a "bedroom" without a window. (I think a closet may also be required, but I can't remember for sure.)

[ratcreature]

In practice that doesn't seem to stop people from renting windowless rooms and crawlspaces to others who then use these for sleeping in though.

[marag.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's NYC for you. I'd say that the apartments you see on TV are often bigger than some of the nicest apartments in NY, which are still fairly small!

For example, I absolutely covet my sister-in-law's parents' place on Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson. Beautiful view, great location, bedrooms smaller than the ones in our house, and a small galley kitchen.

It's beautiful and I'd love to have it if I had a spare few million dollars, but it's much smaller than the average apartment you see on Law & Order.

I love New York, but I'm glad I don't live there :) My brother-in-law's apartment cost $1.2 million. If we'd bought our current house at the time he bought the apartment, it would have cost about $350,000. (We paid less than half that.) And we live in a suburb of Washington, DC, which is expensive too.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I realize the market both for renting and for buying in places like NYC is crazy, but honestly, even the historical practice of bedsharing by hour in overcrowded cities might be a better solution than having to live in a tiny crawl space in the cellar's boiler room, which is what some of these photos look like...

[marag.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine living in one of those, even if I was single! I don't love the city that much. I'd move to the suburbs :D

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I mean, I'm a city dweller and can't really imagine living in a suburb or in a rural area, especially since I don't drive, but there are some minimal standards I have for my living space. Like being able to stand in it, lie down for sleeping, basic sanitation, and some natural light. A place to cook and at least minimal storage aren't all that optional either. I could perhaps stretch to give up my comic collection to reduce my storage needs, but I'd still need a shelf or two.

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

.....

cityfolks are crazy.

[ratcreature]

Some certainly seem to be. A comment on DW points out that in part this is the result of overpriced "trendy" neighborhoods, but even so.