I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman documents the apartments of rent-stabilized tenants living in the East Village for her Instagram account, I Am a Rent Stabilized Tenant. She will share some of the photos here for this ongoing EVG feature.



Photos and text by Susan Schiffman

Tenant: ilyse, since 1977

Why did you move to the East Village?

In 1977, a friend from my hometown asked me if I wanted to share a sublet with her for the summer in NYC. Within a month, I knew that I wanted to stay. I didn’t like the first neighborhood I moved into but then discovered the East Village. It felt like I finally discovered a place where I could fit in. I’ve been in this apartment since December 1977.







How did you find your apartment?

I was actually in another apartment down the street near Phebe’s restaurant, which used to be a kind of wild off-off Broadway scene. I worked there. That was the job I had found. There was a customer in the restaurant who noticed me when I was eating in the Binibon on the corner of Fifth Street. Manhattan Plaza had just been built. It was for actors and he was an actor and he got an apartment there.

He recognized me from my work in the restaurant. He asked me if I was interested in taking over his apartment for what we used to call “key money.” Which meant that you pay the previous tenant a couple hundred bucks and they make the arrangements with the management of the building. It was very old school and you could actually talk with the manager of the building. I got my first lease for $135. That was the rent not the key money. It doesn’t work like that anymore.



What do you love about your apartment?

First of all I love that I feel a connection in this apartment to the immigrant past of this neighborhood. I don’t like to call them ghosts because that sounds unhappy. But I feel that there has been a continuous spirit of something here since this neighborhood was built as a refuge for people coming from other places. People who worked very hard when they got here and made the life that my generation has possible.

Second of all, I love this apartment because it has low rent and where it is located it has been a platform for a really unstructured, exploratory and unconventional lifestyle — where I was able to take acting classes for a little while, photography classes for awhile. I had so many different jobs in 4 or 5 very different industries and have met so many interesting people. I was able to raise two daughters completely on my own in this place.

Because of the milieu that existed in the neighborhood, when my daughters became school age I was able to send them to amazing public schools that were started by parents and teachers. I was able to get involved with community gardening and composting.

I’ve had such a rich life. That doesn’t mean I have a dime in my bank account because I barely do. It doesn’t mean that I take vacations because I don’t. Or that my clothes don’t come from curbside finds because they do. It just means that I’m rich. It has been a very rich existence. I have so many memories tied to this location.











If you're interested in inviting Susan in to photograph your apartment for an upcoming post, then you may contact her via this email.