I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing 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

Tenants: Alex, since 2001

How did you find your apartment?

I was living in Atlanta. I moved here in 2000. I spent the first year in Midtown. I was right in Times Square. My parents were living in Jersey. They were here first. The Midtown apartment was a sublet. I found the apartment through the gay roommate service. After that ended, I lived with my parents for six months to save money.

I grew up in Virginia. My dad has a second career as a Presbyterian minister. He was an associate pastor in his first church. It was on the Upper East Side. They had an amazing apartment. It was owned by the church. It was an old pre-war building. Then they moved to New Jersey and I moved to Atlanta. I don’t know why. I didn’t love it. I always wanted to live in New York City. I was just nervous about it. My parents lived in NYC in the 90s. I went to school in Connecticut. I would come down to visit. I always wanted to live here, I just had some detours.

I was working at an internet company in Soho. A co-worker sent and email that said, “I’m giving up my apartment on Avenue C if anyone is interested.” I answered the email and he showed me the apartment. I asked myself if I wanted to live that far East. And did I want to live that far from a train? Then I saw the apartment and thought, this is going to be it.

That was in June 2001. When I talked to the landlord he gave me an amount for the rent that was higher than the previous tenant. Then Sept. 11 happened. I had just moved into the apartment in June. I heard that people were leaving and that landlords were nervous. I called my landlord and he lowered the rent.

I have a preferential rent. Which means that the landlord is charging me significantly less than the legal rent-stabilized rent. I can only assume he is offering preferential rent because he would not be able to get the legal rent-stabilized rent for this apartment. I signed a paper that says “I acknowledge that I have a preferential rent and that this preferential rent can be revoked at the end of the lease term.”

[According to ProPublica, “the number of leases offering preferential rents is increasing: more than 250,000 of the city’s approximately 610,000 rent stabilized units in 2015 were offered at a preferential rent. Landlords are allowed to hike preferential rents to the legal maximum upon lease renewal.”]

The rent laws are up for renewal in June. One of the platforms is that if you have a preferential rent that it will become the new legal rent-stabilized rent. I am hoping that with the new democratic State Senate, my preferential rent will become the new legal rent.

I am nervous when it is time for lease renewal. A few years ago, there was a knock at the door. Someone from the management company introduced the person he was with as someone from the bank. And that they just want to walk around and look at the building. I was nervous about the visit and was concerned they would be selling the building. It is stressful always wondering if the rent will remain the same or increase to the legal rent. And if the building were to be sold how would that affect my rent?









What do you love about your apartment?

I love that the kitchen is separate and that there is a passthrough. The passthrough makes it feel open. I like the light.

The trade off of facing the street is the noise. There is a lot of noise with the construction. They are always digging up the intersection. I would definitely choose facing the street though because of the light that comes in. I like that it is on the 3rd floor and not too far of a climb.

The guy in the apartment below mine is a jewelry designer. We’re good neighbors. I opened the door recently and a woman across the hall opened her door and she turned out to be someone I knew from graduate school. She moved in with the guy across the hall who is her boyfriend.

I could not account for every apartment, so there are definitely people who I absolutely never see. There is a guy who lives here — he is a much older man who looks very gruff and never looks at or talks to anybody. I’m kind of an introvert but now I’ll say hello to him, “how are you?” and he’ll say “I’m fine how are you?” He talks back to me. He’s a little bit of a grump, which makes the interactions even more endearing.

I value the neighborhood and the apartment more now than when I first moved here. It still feels like a neighborhood.







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

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing 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: Sheila, since 1991

What is your background?

My parents raised us in New York and when they retired they moved to North Carolina. My dad still lives in North Carolina. He retired from the MTA and my mother retired from the Board of Ed. I grew up in Queens and went to Stuyvesant High School when it was on 15th Street. I loved Stuyvesant. It was the first time I was around kids who were geeky like me and we didn’t have to worry about getting beat up. Except when we left.

The first day of school they told the freshmen “don’t ever go below 14th Street.” We couldn’t wait to go below 14th Street. It was scary but there were really great bakeries and thrift stores. That is when I fell in love with thrift shopping. There were methadone programs around Stuyvesant and all the junkies would mess with us. Not in a bad New York street menacing way. They would just curse at us and try and get us to buy liquor for them. There was a liquor store on the corner.

When I was in high school in the late 1970s, the drug being used in the neighborhood was heroin. When I moved to the East Village in 1991 it was crack. The crack vials would crunch under your shoes like snow. At least a crack addict would say “good morning” to you. Now I say good morning to these young tenants and they look at me like “why are you talking to me?”

Why did you move to the East Village and how did you find your apartment?

I was living in Harlem and I found a rat in my closet. I went to the super and I said “oh my g-d there’s a rat in my closet and he said “get a cat.” I said “are you kidding me?” I did get a cat because I did love my apartment. The cat started attacking me. The cat was probably pissed off at me. “Why do you have me in here trying to kill this rat? You terrible woman.”

Most of my friends lived in the East Village. One Saturday I got up, took the train downtown and walked over to the Village Views Realty. I had a friend who lived on that block. I walked into the realty office and a woman named Martha was there. She said, “yeah we’ve got something you might be interested in." We got up and walked over here. I could tell that the floor slanted but it was love at first sight. I definitely wanted the apartment.

By the time we got back to Village Views Realty there were three people waiting to see the apartment. I took it right away. I felt like I got the last rent-stabilized apartment in NYC because the neighborhood starting changing so fast. Like this block changed so quickly. It went from squalor to luxury with nothing in between.

It went away so fast. I knew it was over in 1993 or 1994. I was doing my laundry. I came home and Kate Moss was sitting on the step out front smoking a cigarette. “Excuse me,” I said, “I need to get in.” She said, “oh, I’m sorry love” and got up. Wow, Kate fucking Moss. “What are you doing here?”

We used to have really cute boutiques on this block. They all had to move. A combination of rents rising and retail changing. I have such cute stuff from those stores that don’t fit anymore. There was a girl down the street who had a boutique where she would sit and sew and make clothes and sell them. If you had an idea she wouldn’t make it for you, she would show you how to make it. She’s gone. I guess Kate Moss was down here shopping picking up some cute stuff. That was the beginning of the end. Everytime I went out I would see something new.

Westminster, Jared Kushner’s property management company, runs my building now. I have to say the maintenance got better after they bought the building though I've heard and believe all the horror stories of other Westminster buildings. They do very aggressive renovations. But unlike my previous management company when something breaks, it gets fixed right away. I have an awesome super. Shout out to Ruben. We had a terrible super before. I had horrible landlords before. It was my first experience going to housing court — they never fixed anything, ever. Westminster has brought some stability but people don’t stay. The young people don’t stay.



What is the story with the angels?

Before when I was living in Harlem, I had an awful boyfriend. He was demonic. My sister gave me angels to protect me from him. It kind of caught on and a lot of friends started giving me angels. All of those are gifts. I’ve never purchased an angel for myself. I can’t put any more figurines up.

When all of your stuff is showing you want to like what you see. I have weeded down to the books I like and the pictures I like. I don’t have all of my pictures up. That picture is when I met Betsey Johnson in Bloomingdale's. I was such a big fan of hers. When I moved down here I had this fantasy that Betsey Johnson would open up a store in the East Village and I would be the manager of that store. It didn’t happen.



What do you love about your apartment?

I love the exposed brick. The bathtub is in the kitchen, which is quaint.



I have had such good memories here. When I first moved here I was in my 30s. I had a lot of parties here. It would be unbelievable the amount of people I could fit in here. People would have a good time. They would actually stay. It was a good neighborhood for that. I was near the clubs. Post or pre club, people would come here.

From my 40s, I have very romantic memories, I had some good relationships, it’s a romantic little spot. Now in my 50s it’s more of a work space. I don’t do that many parties anymore and I’m not in any romantic entanglements at this time. So I work out a lot. I do all kinds of different exercises on YouTube. Everything folds up. I push that chair against the fireplace, this goes over here. I put my yoga mat down and go.



I like the architectural details. It’s shabby in here but in my mind’s eye I can see that around the cornice in the bedroom, if I had the time I could paint this a color and that a color.







I was freelancing and then I took a job with a nonprofit, and when I got laid off it was 2011. There were no jobs. I was doing public relations. I had worked at big corporations all of my life. We had a social media department but by 2011 they expected a PR person to tweet and do everything. I didn’t know how to do that. I’ve learned how to do that now because those are the kind of skills you learn by doing. I knew the best way to find a job was to start working.

I went over to the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, MoRUS, on Avenue C. I started volunteering with them. At MoRUS, we do walking tours of the gardens on Saturdays and activist spaces on Sundays. We have an exhibit now for political punk. How punk music intersects with politics. Usually we have pictures of direct actions that happened over the years that gave rise to the community gardens and the squats. We also show photos of how the neighborhood looked before.

Eventually I got a job. I work in Union Square so I walk to work. I make very little money but I don’t care. You can’t put a price on being able to walk to work. I can meet my needs fortunately because I have a rent-stabilized apartment. I’m an administrative assistant now. I was a senior director at one point. I didn’t realize the level of stress I had at that job. I don’t want to do PR ever again. I do customer service now. I like helping real people solve real problems.

If I didn’t have a rent-stabilized apartment I would probably have to move to North Carolina.



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

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: Caren, since 1987

Why did you move to the East Village?

It was so long ago, it’s hard to remember. All of my friends were living here, and we were hanging out down here. The first place I had was in Williamsburg, among the first wave of artists in 1984. I had a 9,000-square-foot loft I shared for $800. I floated around Brooklyn a bit and then I came here.

I’ve been in the East Village since the mid-1980s. Everything was going on here — it was an active art and music scene. There was a lot to do and you could afford to live here.



How did you find your apartment?

First I lived on 11th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue before moving here. I got both of the apartments through Chuck Walsh. He was a well-known realtor on Sixth Street.

I was working with a guy who was getting married. And it was, “Congratulations, whose apartment are you taking?” This was his girlfriend’s apartment. I got to take it over. My landlord didn’t even raise the rent. In exchange for doing work on the apartment the landlord kept the rent at the same price. I was married at the time. My old apartment was too small for the two of us. Even though this apartment is just 500 square feet, it is so much bigger than my old apartment.









What do you love about your apartment?

I love the light. That is the No. 1 thing. The light makes it feel more open and the windows face the street. I don’t think I could live in a space that was dark. It’s important to me. I like to feel time and the seasons moving, so it is important for me to see out.

Living in an apartment for so long you sort of rediscover what you love and don’t love about a place. There are days when I feel that my life is never changing. It's pretty much impossible to move unless you can afford to buy a place.

And then you have the flip side which is that I feel so grateful that I have this space. If I said prayers at night, I would pray that my landlord would live forever. I feel a real sense of gratitude, having this space. Being able to have it for myself and not need to have a roommate. It’s my little piece of the world in here.







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

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: Judy, since 1978

Why did you move to the East Village?

To be near to my dad. I was finishing college and I needed a place to live in 1978. My dad lived on Fifth Street and First Avenue. I wanted to live near to him. This was the first apartment that I ever looked at. We came into this apartment. I walked to the front and I walked to the back. It was May and the trees were in bloom out back. It was like a country apartment. There were things still left in the apartment. It was $150.

I got the apartment cleaned up. I wanted two things before I moved in. I wanted a dog and I wanted a telephone. The telephone was put in and I was supposed to move in the next day. I walked down the block. I was leaving to go to where I was staying and there was somebody at Theater 80 who said “does anybody want this dog?” And there was Johnny. I brought him back into the house and left planning to move in the next day.

My father was a parole officer at the time. He came in to look at the apartment. He said “oh my g-d? What is this dog?” He pulled out his gun. He almost shot the dog. He was not a very big animal lover. My father got his wits back about him.



How did you find your apartment?

We went to a broker. He was over on Sixth Street. They were Ukrainian brokers. The owner of this building was a Ukrainian man. He just passed away at 95 years old or so, this past September. He had the same birthday as I do. He has three daughters who took over ownership of the building.







What do you love about your apartment?

One of the things I love about my apartment is the cross ventilation, especially at this time of year. For many years I didn't have an air conditioning. The comfort of this apartment and the elegance and the old fashioned-ness and modern-ness at the same time. And the amount of ease that it allows me to work with it. I can have as many things as I need to have in it. It offers me enough space.

I really love the moldings and the fact that the bathroom is now in the apartment. The bathroom actually doesn’t belong to the apartment. The molding that is around the bathroom gives a very strong suggestion that the bathroom initially was accessed from the hallway and at a later time a doorway was opened up into the apartment so that it could be used in the apartment. Which changes a lot about the apartment.

My neighbor next door needs to use her bathroom outside her apartment and she lives differently than I do, it creates a different kind of set up. I like the fact that I have a built-in hutch. I would have liked to have a closet — that was taken out.

[The apartment] has served me well. In the 20 apartments, there are about five tenants who have been here as long as I have. A number have been here a fair amount of time like 10 or 15 years. The building just next door to the west has people turning over all the time. It gives a very different character to the building. Ours is very neighborhoody.











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

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing 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: Birdie, since 2013

Why did you come to the East Village?

The boy. He had been living here for years before me. When I met him I had been in a rocky relationship and we just clicked right away. He had a place. I had nowhere to go. We loved each other right off the bat, so I moved in.





How did you discover that your apartment is rent stabilized?

After being in the East Village for awhile my husband knows a lot of people who have been here their entire lives. He asked them if they had any experience with rent stabilization. They said he needed to contact GOLES and look into our rent history. You can get it for free. As soon as we did this, it was a window that opened to the world. We didn’t know we could get our rent history from the city. You can go back four years.

My husband lived upstairs for five years. I moved in with him ... the week we met. I lived with him for a couple of years upstairs, and now downstairs in this apartment for three. We stopped paying rent when we found out all of this information in November. They’ve let us ride out not paying rent because it’s moving that four-year period forward. His time upstairs isn’t going to count since each apartment is separate. We are paying twice as much as we should in this downstairs apartment and upstairs is a little bit less than double.

[The landlord is] trying to run us out. We sit in bed and talk about this all the time and try and figure out what their plan is. We have lawyer-ed up and nobody else did. [Other residents] have all taken the buyout. The first tier was $6,000. A lot of tenants left for $6,000. That was before we discovered that we were rent-stabilized. The second tier of the buyout was $10,000.

For months up until April it was just us in the back building, and then just the tenant across the hall from us. They offered him $15,000 because he stopped paying rent for a couple of months but he didn’t have a lawyer. He didn’t know that he was rent-stabilized. He took the buyout and is staying up the street, crashing with a friend.

You really have to do your research. We paid $2,500 in a retainer to a lawyer, which was really painful, but what we’re going to get in back rent — not a buyout — will be worth it. People need to know that if you don’t check your rent history you will never know if you are actually owed something.

There were only six tenants before us in our apartment since the 1980s and they were all paying $500. Then tenants were listed as living here but their rent was not listed and then it jumped to $1,550. The lawyer did the math. The landlord can only justify massive rent hikes if they put in $20,000 or more in renovations. And they must be able to provide receipts for all of the improvements that were made.

They have not done any of that.

We were never registered as rent-stabilized. None of the apartments in the front building or the back building were registered as rent-stabilized. There are eight apartments in this back building. We are the last ones here. Seven of the other apartments are empty and will be renovated.

The apartment across the hall from us is a mirror image of our apartment. When the tenant was living there he was paying $1,750. We were paying $1,550.

Renovations have begun in the empty apartments in the front building. One tenant was sitting in her living room and a drill came through the wall.

We won’t pay rent till we get the back rent check.



What do you love about your apartment?

I love that there is just enough room for me to paint and we can breathe and it’s still cozy. It’s a little difficult because it’s so tight but it’s made us really close in our marriage. We lost 45 square feet from our apartment upstairs to down here. Which doesn’t seem like a lot but when you’re in it it changes everything. We’re so right on top of each other. I love that we’re a lot closer than we would have been in a larger space and there is nowhere to run and hide. We have to communicate with one another and figure it out.







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

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing 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

Tenants: Jess and Martin, since 1981

Why did you move to the East Village?

Jess:

I was living in Brooklyn and I wanted to live in Manhattan. I answered an ad in the newspaper and I came and looked at [the apartment]. It needed work, but it had a garden. So I took it. I really didn’t know the East Village. I was by myself at the time. I was baffled because all night long people would be ringing my bell. I didn’t know very many people. They weren’t ringing for me. It didn’t take me too long to understand that the first door as you come in which is one room right on the street had a metal door. There was a hole in the door and they were selling drugs through the door.

There was also a shooting gallery across the street in an abandoned building. People were selling drugs on the corners. I became aware of all this. At the same time many storefronts were turning into performance spaces. I started working with an experimental theater company in a squat on 13th Street. We were working with new kinds of texts and new forms.

Many people today feel nostalgic for that time. There was a lot of misery and poverty. But then there was the beginning of a renewal and renaissance.

I found out that my mother had been born in this neighborhood, on Sixth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D, in 1921. I hadn’t known that. I feel a connection to her. Her family moved to Brooklyn eventually. In that typical immigrant thing, when once you get a little money you try to move out to a better place.

It always gave me pleasure to think, when our son was born, that he played in the Park that my mother had played in. When our son was born, it was before they had renovated the playground. It had one broken swing and a sandbox. We saw the whole change.





Martin:

I had many times ventured from the west side across Bleecker Street and St Mark's but never proceeded any further east. I just noticed a different vibe right at the entrance to St Mark's. There was less-intense light — it was the dark part of town then — and it seemed unfamiliar and mysterious. Soon enough I entered the gate to meet friends I had met by then. Then I rented an apartment on Avenue B.

What do you love about your apartment?

Jess:

I love the serenity here. It is really quite peaceful. If I want company, I walk outside the door. There’s still shops where I know the people. I can go to the butcher. I can go to Ben’s magazine store. A lot of places have disappeared and people we knew. I work in the neighborhood. I teach in a school in the neighborhood. I walk everywhere.

There are also things that we don’t like. There are chronic problems in the apartment. They can’t really be solved definitively. We have leaks in the bathroom. It’s an old building. We have lived here for 37 years. We have 37 years worth of stuff.

Let me show you our garden.









Martin:

Stabilized rent. The door to the backyard. Being woken by the song of birds. And listening to the various voices of human beings living their lives freely and not being concerned with disturbing their neighbors. To move out of the apartment onto the street any time of the day and night and encounter people.

I don’t like that It’s small and that it is on the ground floor and therefore not much light enters. I love apartments with high ceilings and even though I like this apartment, I still have to admit that I don’t like that our apartment does not have high ceilings.

What I like about the neighborhood is the human scale.

I don’t like the pretentious restaurants that lack atmosphere and culinary delights, the chain stores and the absence of craftspeople as there once were when I moved in, visible from the streets and avenues at work. I don’t like the nail salons.







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