We have a rent stabilized apartment at $2600 and our combined household income is right around $200k a year. If we didn’t have our rent locked in like we do, we wouldn’t be able to afford to live here. That is a sign of an incredibly deep affordability crisis, not a sign that we’re greedy.
We’re stabilized at roughly the same amount and market rate in our neighborhood is easily $700 more per month
I have a friend 4ish years younger than me. They and their spouse are in tech. They just missed the window before interest rates went up and basically got locked out of being able to afford a house on the West Coast. Its a problem.
When my wife and I got our rent stabilized 2bd apartment back in 2015, it was $3400. Basically market rate. This year, the market rate apartment above us rented for $900 more than ours. A functioning housing market would not have this kind of spread.
Nothing quite like the looming dread that starts approx 2 months after signing an NYC lease, wondering if your landlord is going to raise your rent by a crippling amount (mine was 50%). Good Cause has improved this a bit but it still sucks to plan your life around “maybe I have to move in April”
Having rent stabilized is such a more important quality of life measure than basically any amount of income, if you’re a renter.
There is a straight line from the people on Subway Takes complaining about transplants like me to Andrew Cuomo saying that Zohran living in a rent stabilized apartment is a sign that he’s a hypocrite, which is why you gotta fight both.
It’s a real, though less-discussed, measure of the scale of the housing crisis in this city how rent is a very real burden even at pretty high incomes. Not the most important measure, but a very real one!
Co-sign
I’m not calling you greedy, but that’s only about 14% of your gross income on rent. You should be able to afford an apartment about twice as expensive as the one you’re in now.
My husband makes about as much as Zohran. I’m currently unemployed and pregnant with our first child (good luck finding a job as a visibly pregnant woman!). There’s no way we could stay in the city and have a kid without our rent-stabilized apartment.
Mazel tov! My wife was laid off two days after finding out she was pregnant, and I feel you, it suuuuuuucks. She found a job eventually, but those months of stress were rough, and she would’ve gotten more leave had she held our son in till August (he was born at the start of June)
When I was working full-time it meant we had just enough that we could save a little. When I go back to work we’ll have over $20k in childcare expenses. My husband’s loan payments gobble up 20% of his salary. If we had any extra money we’d be helping out my parents. How do they expect us to live?
We’re mid-career professionals having a baby in a studio apartment. We’re not staying here for kicks! Nothing makes my blood boil quite so much as Andrew Cuomo out summering in the Hamptons, deciding how much we deserve to suffer.
He really doesn’t understand that 2600 dollars is a lot of money for housing, huh?
I genuinely want him to ask how much he thinks a couple that makes $200k should spend on rent. My wife and I are at about $2600 but would love more than a 1 bedroom and the cost skyrockets to like $4-5k per month.
Getting convinced he's literally just repeating landlord lobby talking points