Read on Twitter
I've come to realize that a good many people who follow me here don't live in cities and have seemingly never lived in an apartment, so this seems like a good opportunity to offer a primer on apartment life in NYC (thread) https://twitter.com/dawn_warn/status/1341400625934962703
NYC has a huge variety of apartment/building types and we live in a small, pre-war building in a pretty affluent part of the city. Pre-war means it was constructed before WWII. These apartments tend to have fewer amenities and are definitely creakier...
...and more idiosyncratic in how they were built. But they're sturdy, and tend to have cheaper rent, and are typically a bit more soundproof. In other words they have "character," which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it
Our building has 20 units and is a 5 floor walk-up (so no elevator). Our super (the person who does day-to-day maintenance and repairs) lives in the building in the basement. This is a HUGE plus, because it means he's always around and is invested in the building not falling down
But because the person who actually owns the building is kind of a slum lord, our super also provides services for four of the owner's other buildings which are scattered around the neighborhood. So: he's busy. And we try not to make his life worse
A small apartment building is sort of a closed ecosystem, and ours has a couple of rent-stabilized units. This means that the city government has capped how much the rent can be increased on those units on a yearly basis. This keeps them more "affordable"
People who find nice, rent-stabilized apartments will live in them their entire lives, because buying in the city is basically impossible. Two-bed apartments in our neighborhood of around 800 square feet sell for $600-800k. It's more cost effective to rent your entire life
So our building is made up of core, living-here-forever tenants, and people who cycle in and out. But our landlord is actually pretty good about not jacking up the rent, so there are also people (like us) who aren't stabilized, but whose rent doesn't just randomly skyrocket
So we actually know a good proportion of our neighbors. We've been in their apartments (although not this year, for obvious reasons). We hold a building wide holiday party (although not this year). They're, for the most part, not strangers
When something goes wrong in one unit it typically effects others. When one unit has mice, you can bet that all the surrounding units will also have mice. Same goes for roaches, or a leak, or backed up plumbing. These units aren't isolated pods, they're a networked collective
And, on top of all of this, because it's NYC the ground floor of the building is a retail space. And in our case it's a major chain, meaning it brings in an -astronomical- amount of rent. If the landlord loses that tenant it could mean the building will be sold
The backed up pipe originates in the basement, where the pipe terminates. This means that the problem starts at the basement and creeps upward, impacting first the anchor business, and then tenants. So this is bad for the entire ecosystem. We NEED that business to stay
So if we ignore our super and use our sink anyway, it's an existential threat to the building. It hurts the anchor business, which could down the road end with all of us being evicted. And it hurts our neighbors, who we know and like
And it would also piss off our super, which is just the worst possible move someone could make. You need to be on good terms with your super. This is the person who repairs your shit when it breaks, and who does handyman stuff he really should charge extra for
Plus he services four fucking buildings. This guy is busy, doing the kind of stuff nobody else really wants to do. We're invested in not making his life more difficult. It's the reason we keep him supplied with whisky and cookies all year round
It's bullshit that the landlord didn't just spring for the emergency, off-hours plumber. They make incredibly stupid operational decisions and they hire the cheapest, most inept service people this city has to offer. But fucking up the pipes to prove a point isn't the move
Acting selfishly makes life hard for other tenants. It makes life hard for the anchor business. It makes life hard for the super. It'll piss off the landlord, who could then jack up our rent. And it's also just a shitty thing to do
It's worth pointing out ours is not the only way this system operates. Our building is owned by someone who owns multiple buildings, but the property is managed by a third party they hired to do the day-to-day operations. So we interact with that company
But if we lived in a condo building then it's much more of a fuck-your-neighbors situation, as each apartment is privately owned and basically its own tiny kingdom. In that case you pay monthly condo fees which are pooled to pay for repairs and maintenance
And in a co-op (a cooperative) the building is actually owned by a corporation that you belong to. When you buy your unit you buy shares in the corporation, and the corporation then gives you permission to live in your particular unit
So technically you don't own your apartment, you own shares in the corporation. And co-op fees, like condo fees, pay for maintenance and repairs. Co-ops are also VERY selective about who can buy shares. It's sort of like joining a fraternity/sorority, where you have to pledge
And then there are row houses that can have as few as 2 units, buildings that take up entire blocks with literally hundreds of units. Stand alone houses in the outer boroughs, basement/ground floor apartments, illegal apartments, boarding houses...
