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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, to your call on the biggest trade-offs you've been willing to make in exchange for lower rent or more accommodating locations or whatever. What strange apartments setups were you willing to write off and live with? Again, what sparked this is that story in the New York Times about someone touring a beautiful apartment in Greenwich Village without even realizing at first that, besides it being beautiful in other ways, there was no toilet and the bathroom, only a shared standalone toilet in the hallway. Let's see if anybody can match that. Jean in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jean.

Jean: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You got a story for us?

Jean: Sure. My first three apartments, one was in Soho, I had a shower stall in the kitchen that I used to have to climb up on a cinder block to get in. The second was a commercial building in Lower Manhattan where I had a toilet in the hall that I shared with a business, and my third apartment in the East Village had a bathtub in the kitchen. Now, finally, in Stuyvesant Town, I have my first full bathroom as an adult. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Did you ever live in a college dorm?

Jean: No, never. I went to SVA in Manhattan. I always had an apartment.

Brian Lehrer: Sometimes, when I lived in the dorms, the bathrooms were down the hall and you lived with it, but not in every dorm situation. I don't know, maybe it's just different when you're a grown-up, you're like, "Oh, that's gross." In a way, you don't think about when you're 18. Who else? Louis in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Louis.

Louis: Hi, Brian, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you. You're on.

Louis: Okay, great. I was looking for an apartment about 10 years ago and I just couldn't find any and I was limited on resources back then, so I decided to hire a broker because it was so hard to find a cheap apartment. The broker found an apartment on a rent-controlled building, which back then I knew it was a, let's say a good investment. We decided to take the apartment. The only trade-off was that it was on the fifth floor with no elevator, and back then, my two kids were younger, now I have three kids, but it's been 10 years and we're still living in the same apartment.

Brian Lehrer: How hard has adjustment been?

Louis: Oh, well, let's say my knees have taken a toll.

Brian Lehrer: Louis, thank you very much. Adam in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Adam.

Adam: Hey, Brian, thanks for taking my call. This story is about my younger brother. He moved into his first apartment in Hell's Kitchen and his bedroom was accessed through a completely vertical ladder, an old fire escape ladder in one of the hallways. You'd have to climb the ladder, go through a little opening [inaudible 00:03:17] bedroom was essentially a box that was built on the building.

Brian Lehrer: Let me see if I understand this. You had to use the fire escape in order to get into the apartment?

Adam: You get into the apartment in a normal way, but they repurposed an old fire escape ladder which was in the hallway of the apartment itself. That's the ladder you'd have to climb to get into his bedroom.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I see, right, and they could call it a loft and say it's an amenity.

Adam: Yes. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Adam, thank you very much. Dorothy in Basking Ridge, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Hi, how are you? Great to be on. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Dorothy: Okay. I have a funny story. I didn't actually move into this place, but I want to say about four years ago, I was looking for a one-bedroom on the Upper West Side and I found a location that was very lovely. It's quite expensive or I think this is actually the mid-range, on the side of $2,800 a month, but the owner was simultaneously trying to let the apartment while sell it to a new owner, and so the lease specified that I would not be able to be in the apartment from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Sundays because then the realtor would be holding open houses. That was for an indefinite period of time. I actually passed on that and I wasn't quite sure if that was even legal, but that was a strange one.

Brian Lehrer: That's pretty funny. Thank you very much, Dorothy, as we're collecting your strange rental arrangement stories inspired by the article in the Times about the writer, Stephen Reddy who didn't realize at first that the apartment that he was looking at, though beautiful in other ways, had no toilet. Can you top that? Tess in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tess.

Tess: Hi, Brian. I didn't end up choosing this apartment because it was a little too strange, but it had two different entrances to the apartment and it had clearly been really reconfigured, and one of the entrances was through the bathroom. The entrance to the apartment was through the bathroom, and that was I decided not a good fit for me.

Brian Lehrer: Now, were you more worried about what it would feel like when you came in or when you went out?

Tess: My mind was just so blown. I think always that just seems very uncomfortable and not the way I want to welcome my guests.

Brian Lehrer: You wonder what was the architect thinking? "Where are we going to put the door? Should we enter in the living room? No, I think we should enter this apartment in the bathroom."

Tess: It had clearly been just cut up into too many apartments, the building, and so they were getting very creative.

Brian Lehrer: That's the way it happens. Tess, thank you very much. All right, who else has one? Owen in Livingston, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Owen.

Owen: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I just finished up a lease in my first apartment. This is just a little anecdotal story for anyone who wants to go out and rent. When I first looked at the apartment, all the amenities were great, everything worked exactly how it should, but then after living there for a few months, the dishwasher stops working, the heat turns off, and the AC doesn't work in the heatwave during the summer. It really turned into a big disaster and it was not a positive first renting experience. Anyone who is looking for an apartment, the best advice I can give you is talk to the previous owner because the landlord really does not always have your best interest in mind.

Simple fixes that should have been instantaneous took months to finish. Your landlord really has a big say over your quality of life. Have a very good idea of who you're getting involved with before you sign the lease.

Brian Lehrer: That's good advice, Owen. If you can find that person who was renting there before you, that's one way to get a reference. Landlords do it on you, right? You ever fill out one of those rental applications and they want to know who your previous landlord was so they can find out if you trash the place or whatever. Renters should be able to do it with previous renters to get references for the landlord. No doubt about it. Some of the things coming in on Twitter. When I was in college, my roommate and I went to an apartment off-campus. We had lower rent if we agreed to take care of the owner's Siamese cats.

We took care of the cats and I always considered them as my roommates since they paid half the rent. That's a nice one. I mentioned the college dorms before. Somebody writes, remember there's a custodial staff for shared bathrooms in college dorms. No such thing once you leave college. Let's see. What's another one? Chelsea Apartment 1976 had shower stall in the kitchen and toilet-only closet in the back. Still sharing kitchen and full bath on six resident hallway. Six resident hallway still sharing a kitchen and a full bath. Special reason for staying at the location when might've moved, trade off. Let's see, Amanda in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda: Oh, gosh. Hi, Brian. Sorry, I was surprised. I had you on speaker listening.

Brian Lehrer: Yours is going to be less quirky and more serious, right?

Amanda: Yes, so mine's more of a cautionary tale. It started out quirky. The height of the pandemic in 2020, I moved to Alphabet City, and I loved the location. It was a tiny, tiny place, so I was giving up initially a lot of space and I also was giving up gas. It was a what we call an "efficiency kitchen", just the electric accessibility, but that was okay. Even though I cook a lot, I got a really big air fryer that also was a mini little oven and it was I had a microwave, the whole deal and the setup was fine. Initially, there were a few things that I requested to be done before I moved in. I won't mention it too much because I actually can't get in too many specifics. I moved in. As I lived there, things started getting worse and worse.

There were some shady stuff going on in the building, and then there were multiple leaks. For two months, I didn't have heat and hot water and I was given the runaround. Told that it was the building's fault, that the building wasn't doing anything. This was from my landlord. Then I proceeded to get, and still in, very, very sick from toxic mold exposure, black mold. I actually called in a 2311 heat and mold violation. The city came and did an inspection and then found that the apartment was actually completely illegal unbeknownst to me, who had thought that I was renting something that was legal, et cetera. They found a host of other violations and did a vacate order on the apartment and I'm now homeless.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You're staying with somebody?

Amanda: I've been going pet-sitting to pet-sitting gig. Also, I'm in touch with a lot of nonprofits and figuring it out in between [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: We're going to end on the serious note of your call. Do you have any advice coming out of this as to how to check for that? Of course, when you buy a house or a co-op or condo, you frequently have an inspector who's going to a look for signs of things like toxic mold. How about if you're a renter?

Amanda: I would say make sure that the landlord is able to show you that it's a legal apartment. There are also websites. Like you can go on the HPD website, you can go on city websites to check out the history of the building, et cetera.

Brian Lehrer: That's right and you can always, on the mold question, look for water damage around the windows and other places where there might be water intrusion. On that more serious note on this call-in with lots of your quirky tradeoffs to rent affordable apartments in New York City, we thank you for all your calls.

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