In a townhouse on the Upper East Side, Carl and his roommate watch presi๊dential candidates debate on TV. They regularly stay up late drinking 🉐— tea, of course — and chatting. Sometimes she’ll ask him to play the piano, and he’s happy to oblige.
Carl is a 30-year-old Ph.D. student who studies classics. His roommate just turned 90. Carl lives rent-free in exchange for, as the nonagenarian’s family put it, “keeping an eye” on her. (In October, , the average rent for a one-bedroom in the neighborhood was $2,732 a month.)
“It definitely sounded — and does still seem — too good to be true,” says Carl, who ask♛ed that a pseudonym be used to protect his privacy. “I’m getting a huge♈ benefit out of the situation, but the family is very happy that I’m here. They feel like I’m doing them a favor.”
The astronomical cost of living in New York City makes headlines every month when new data is♒ released. The latest stats are no less staggering: Rental prices in both Manhattan and Brooklyn are at an all-time high, with Brooklynites paying an average of $2,600 a month and Manhattanites averaging $3,339, according to listing site on the third quarter of this year.
The latter figure marks a 9.5 percent incre💮ase from last year, the big♉gest jump since StreetEasy began tracking data in 2008.
Why? “Tight mortgage lending conditions are keeping many tenants from becoming homeowners and therefore creating a logjam of demand in the rental market,” explains Jonathan Miller of real estate consulting firm . “Most new construction for rental housing is skewed towards the upper end of the market, keeping supply in the ent﷽ry and middle levels scarce.”
With no relief in sight, it’s no surprise thaꦉt scrappy New Yorkers are seeking out ingenious ways to keep roofs over their heads. For his part, Carl landed his sweet♐ spread — what he calls an “off-the-beaten-path way of living in the city” — through a friend of a friend.
Of course, not everyone is eager to live with someone else’s elderly relative — even for free. Another excellent tactic for keeping rental costs down is to double (or triple, or quadruple) up on roommates. And for tho𝕴se who prefer to live collectively rather than try their luck with Craigslist strangers, that cost-saving necessity becomes a proactive lifestyle choice.
Take one such “intentional community,” Koz Collective. It’s a four-story house in Bed-Stuy with two kitchens and a backyard fire pit that houses eight like-minded roommates. Denizens range in 🎉age from 24 to 41 and work a variety of jobs, from an audiovisual technician to a bar manager to a yoga instr🍌uctor; Koz’s rents range from $300 to $500 per month.
Many of the roommates at Koz are veterans of other communal living spaces, like , a 15-person, anarchist-focused collective in Bed-Stuy that was evicted earlier this year, and , a sprawling East Williamsburg building that housed around 50 activists at its height. While Koz doesn’t hew to🃏 a political identity, its denizens are all radical-lean꧒ing. Many advocate for causes like community farming and environmental justice.
The — a group dedicated to building, renting and selling bicycles designed to carry large loads, as well as using thoꩵse bikes to do delivery for local businesses — operates out of the basement, and several of the organizers live there, too.
What differentiates a communal living space from a regular apartment with a lot of roommates? “For me it comes down to desire: people living together because they want to, not because they have to,” says Laurel Leckert, 33, a Koz resident and sister of this article’s author. “A collective means contributing to the large project of the home, working to engage with and support each other.” It also means attending weekly house meetings, dumpster-diving for food, and helping prepare weekly “family dinners.” The Koz folks find that living this way allows them to maintain a nontraditional lifestyle that’s not so focused on income.
“I can’t afford even the lo🌃west market-rate rent in New York City,” Leckert adds. “And I wouldn꧒’t want to live the lifestyle necessary to do so.”
Never fear: You don’t have to be an anarchist or e🌞njoy eating food rescued from the trash to take part in a communal lifestyle ✃and low rents. Sometimes you just have to believe.
At and , both townhouses in Manhattan’s Gramercy neighborhood, there’s no stated requirement that renters be Quakers or Mennonites, bu🅠t the affiliation certainly helps. Pennington has been a home for Friends since the turn of the 19th century; Menno House was bought by Mennonite conscientious objectors during the Korean War.
Rooms are as low as $500 per month. And that’s in a 𝓰neighborhood that, according to Citi Habitat’s most recent report, is the second-priciest in all of New York City, 🐼with median rents clocking in at $4,100.
The houses have 24 and 14 bedrooms, respectively, and a five- and two-year cap on long-term residents — “otherwise people would never leave,” say Jas♏on Oswald, the Menno House manager. “You have a very nice community here,” he adds. “You’re living with nine roommates, which can be good or bad but mostly good. It’s a strong support system.”
Like Koz Collective, Menno House has weekly “family dinners,” which d💜ouble as house meetings, and residents take turns perf𝓰orming chores.
Still other inventive New Yorkers find ways for their homes to actually pad their bank accounts, not just d✨rain them.
In 2013, Amber Watson, 31, and her partner, both musicians, were looking for an apartment big enough to fit a rehearsal space for their bands. When they found a 4,500-square-foot former button factory in Ridgewood, they knew it was the perfect spot. Despite the fact that Ridgewood rents are some of the fastest-growing in Queens — according to the latest ,𓆏 they rose 7 percent since last year — Watson and her partner have made their eclectic home work for theꦿm.
“There’s a real difference in creative energy when you’re not cooped up in a tiny apartment,” Watson says of her home🌼, which she calls Space Space. “Yo♎ur creativity really expands with your atmosphere.”
To r🥃aise funds (and to have fun, of course), they host parties and concerts — rock, punk, brass and experimental music — as well as run a successful recordin𝔉g studio, which they built in the basement. Revenue from that, plus other hacks, subsidizes half of Watson’s $6,000 rent.
Another way to transform your home from a money pit into a money-maker involvꦐes the short-term rental site Airbnb, which is a l🍸ucrative outlet for many New Yorkers.
Among them is Phil, a 30-year-old events producer who travels about half the year for work. (He asked to use a⛎ pseudonym for fear of getting in trouble with his landlord, even though he believes his setup is lega💮l.)
Phil lives in East Williamsburg’s notorious . Known for raucous all-night parties and people 📖living 10 to a room, the two massive converted factories on McKibbin Street have been housing hipsters since 1998. When the these “art dorms” in 2008, a cubbyhole within a larger space could be had for as low as $375 a month.
But when Phil signed his lease two years ago, rent for a large, sunny, cockroach-infested loft totaled more than $4,000. “I’ve lived in 10 apartments in ไthree boroughs, and I think this is the greatest neighborhood in New York,” Phil says🍨. “But I knew the only way I’d be able to afford it was with Airbnb.”
Phil spearheaded and financed a major renovation of the space — a thorough extermination and deep cleaning, plus he built walls to divide the large space into a 🦹half-dozen smaller rooms. He an﷽d his wife decorated each little room with a different theme and filled the place with plants and art. “It’s a fun little bohemian oasis,” he says.
Phil now has two permanent roommates — which is what makes the scheme legal, based on New York’s occupancy laws — and lists five rooms on A🐟irbnb, for which he charges as little as $40 p✃er night.
Using Airbnb has become so popular in the neighborhood that Phil recently received an email from his landloಌrd, addressed to the whole building, that warns, “If you’re going to put your place on Airbnb, just make sure you’r꧑e following the law.”
Phil has found his offerings cater less to tourists and more to people trying to transition into being New Yorkers. “They’re looking for permanent apartments, or are going to as soon as they can afford it,” he says. “Or they’re interviewing for jobs and are waiting for someone to make them an offer.”
As the cost of living continues to rise — with what seems like — the innovative folks who make NYC tick will continue to dream u💝p wily ways to make it work. Although the , and of yesteryear may not be en vogue, there are no doub♕t plenty more weird and wonderful ideas just around the corner.