Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. Finding affordable housing in New York City is no easy task. On today's episode, we meet a young Brooklyn knight whose apartment hunt for a rent-stabilized unit took all but five years. He documented his experience on social media. Plus, some advice from a housing lawyer. That's all ahead, but first, here's what's happening in New York City. A rally in the Bronx over the weekend is highlighting growing grassroots support for taxing New York's wealthiest residents ahead of the state budget deadline. Advocates are urging Governor Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on high earners before the April 1st deadline. Organizers say younger New Yorkers are increasingly getting involved in that push. C.J. Gallagher is a student at Lehman College and a member of its Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter.

C.J. Gallagher: I'm excited to see a bunch of Lehman students show up and start to get involved politically, people from the Bronx showing. I'm excited to hopefully see this momentum of pushing these taxes so that we can get better funding in our city.

Janae Pierre: Gallagher helped start the campus chapter and wants to keep building momentum around the effort. If you're flying out of a local airport this week, you may want to check ahead to see what security wait times are looking like before you head out. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it's restored security wait time reporting to the websites of its airports after a hiatus, but the agency says wait times are still subject to rapid change based on passenger volumes and Transportation Security Administration staffing during the partial federal government shutdown affecting TSA.

The Port Authority says travelers should build in significantly more time for their trips and check with their airlines for the status of their flights. It's still March Madness, and UConn's men's basketball stunned top-seeded Duke Sunday in the NCAA tournament. UConn trailed by 19 points, and they kept chipping away for the comeback as Duke collapsed. Freshman Braylon Mullins sank a desperation three-pointer with less than a second in the game for a final score of 70 to 72. UConn will face Illinois in the Final Four this Saturday.

Meanwhile, UConn women beat Notre Dame 70 to 52 to advance to the Final Four as well. The defending national champs will face their opponent on Friday. Coming up, content creator and New York City native Troy Kingston shares his five-year journey finding affordable housing. That's after a quick break. Troy Kingston is a native New Yorker. He's a content creator and makes videos about life in New York City.

Troy Kingston: Did you know there's a mansion in Between Bed Stuy and Clinton Hill? Many people-- Driving in New York sucks, and I say it all the time. If you drive in New York City, you know exactly what I'm talking about this. I'm over by Chelsea, Manhattan, and in a few years, none of this will be here.

Janae Pierre: He has been documenting his search for stable housing online, a process that started when he was 18 years old.

Troy Kingston: I normally would say I would never move to the Bronx. This apartment complex might make me change my mind. Yo, I'm in Midtown by Times Square, and I'm next to this new building that just went up. Now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, "Yo, who really want to live in Times Square?"

Janae Pierre: Since then, he's bounced between sublets, knocked on doors, talked to doormen, and tried everything from brokers to the city's housing lottery. Troy's here with me now. He's 24 and just got approved. Congratulations on that and welcome.

Troy Kingston: Thank you so much, and glad to be here.

Janae Pierre: We're so happy to have you. Your hunt for affordable housing started at the age of 18. What was your housing situation like then?

Troy Kingston: My housing situation was rough. My mother was going through a lot, and she ended up telling me I had to go.

Janae Pierre: I'm sorry to hear that.

Troy Kingston: At that time, I didn't really know what to do. My grandma offered me to stay at her place, but it's rough living with my grandma. My grandma is a very old-fashioned woman. Even though she's retired, she was an NYPD officer, and so she had a really strict clockwork schedule.

Janae Pierre: Y'all were butting heads.

Troy Kingston: Yes, we were butting heads in there. I put up with it for a little bit, but it got to a point where I was like, "I can't stay at grandma's," especially because it's a little cramped in there. I was jumping house to house for a little bit. I had a couple of friends that helped me out. My best friend let me crash at his place for a little bit. Eventually, you get to a point where somebody might go, "Hey, I let you stay here for a couple days, but it's not going to really work out." I decided to get a room. I was paying about $1500 for a room.

Janae Pierre: $1500 for a room. Let's get a year.

Troy Kingston: 2021.

Janae Pierre: This is pandemic, room $1,500.

Troy Kingston: You would have thought by around that time that stuff would have got drastically cheaper. I remember around that time everybody was getting Covid deals, but no, not really.

Janae Pierre: Not you.

Troy Kingston: I didn't find anything I could afford. I just got my job as a concierge in New York City, which was a huge job for me. I didn't tell anybody at my job what I was going through. I didn't want to be judged. I get up, and I do my 40 hours every week, and I still can't find a place. It put me in a dark spot, especially because I work in an apartment complex. Can you imagine you go and you help out tenants every day who can afford $5,000, $6,000 for a one-bedroom, a studio, and you have to put on this face and be happy and be hospitable and welcoming, and you don't have a place to yourself.

Janae Pierre: You had a five-year hunt for your first apartment.

Troy Kingston: Yes.

Janae Pierre: Let's talk about that process. Were you doing that alone? Did you have a broker? What did that look like for you?

Troy Kingston: When I first went about looking at apartments, I Googled what I could do to find an affordable apartment. It led me down the basic routes of, hey, there's Housing Connect. That there's rent stabilized apartments out there, and that maybe you can get some apartments on StreetEasy and Zillow. Which quickly humbled me because then first I realized that on Housing Connect is affordable housing, but it's not always going to be in your case where, oh, you can afford to live at an apartment. I didn't even know an affordable apartment could be considered $3,000.

Janae Pierre: Housing Connect is the city's housing lottery system.

Troy Kingston: Yes. Housing Connect was the first thing I started doing. Then I also realized it takes forever to actually get back to you. First, you have to apply, then you have to wait to get a log number. That log number can take forever. Then even after you get the log number, it takes them even longer to actually get the whole process done. I went about first looking through Housing Connect. When I didn't find anything through Housing Connect, I looked through StreetEasy and Zillow, and a ton of other apartment apps.

I remember I used to have a folder with all my apartment apps, and I would just go down the list every day, like, "All right, let me filter this. One bedroom, one bathroom, or studio?" I'd put my budget price. I would put 1,000 to 1,300, and I would just look every day. I would usually wake up in the morning and do it, and I would check back in in the afternoon. Sometimes I would also at the dead of night, just be like, "Maybe something will pop up early. Maybe overnight listing would pop up." Sometimes you really would find a listing like that. I remember the first apartment I ever found that was technically rent-stabilized and cheap was through StreetEasy, but when I went there, and I looked at the place, it was a ton of fees to actually move in. He wanted two months of rent, a security deposit, and he wanted a broker's fee.

Janae Pierre: Wow. That could easily be what, $8,000?

Troy Kingston: Yes. It was extremely pricey. I didn't have the savings. I was like, "Oh, I can't afford it."

Janae Pierre: You have all these apps. What neighborhoods were you looking at?

Troy Kingston: I was not exclusive to any neighborhood. I feel like at one point I didn't have the choice to really be picky about where I want to live at. I was like, "If I want to stay in New York and I can't end up living in Brooklyn anymore, I would sacrifice not living in Brooklyn.

Janae Pierre: You were on StreetEasy, Zillow, Housing Connect. Did word of mouth help you at all?

Troy Kingston: The way I got my apartment, actually was somewhat through word of mouth.

Janae Pierre: Oh, cool.

Troy Kingston: My grandmother told me that there's a ton of housing agencies that could maybe help me out. I began calling people and speaking and walking up to agencies, asking them, "Hey, is there any affordable housing applications that you can offer me? Any vacancies, anything available?" An agency that I reached out to, and I said, "Hey, do you guys have any one-bedroom, studios, or anything available?" He said, "No, we don't have anything available now, but we do get vacancies sometimes. You just need to mail a letter to us with the application." I got the application from them, picked it up, and I mailed it off to them, which later down the line would get me my apartment.

Janae Pierre: I'm listening to you talk about your experience in this process, and it legit sounds like a full-time job. You were working during all of this, right?

Troy Kingston: Yes.

Janae Pierre: That's crazy.

Troy Kingston: My co-workers can tell you, and I might get in trouble for this, but even on the work computer, I was on Housing Connect every day. My coworker would always walk up to me like, "Troy, you've been on this app, refreshing it every day. I'm like, "Yo, man. I need a place." I was digging through forums a lot. City-Data forum is probably the number one forum that I looked through every day. They have a section for affordable housing, and I would look on there every day to see if there was anything new.

If there was any building that I applied to, I would filter the search to be like, "Hey, let me see what this building's process is looking like." When I first got contacted for a housing lottery on Housing Connect for 336 Douglass St. Apartments in Park Slope, Brooklyn, there was actually a forum on there. I went in on there every day, and I was like, "Hey, do you guys know the process on what's going on when they're going to give the one bedrooms out?"

It was a good forum. People on there would say what log number where they got contacted because a log number is pretty important when you're applying the lotteries. If you have a log number of 100, you want to know, "Hey, did they skip past me? Because this guy got contact, and he's number 150 on a log number." It was a really useful forum.

Janae Pierre: What made you skip out on that Park Slope apartment?

Troy Kingston: I got denied from it. When I got contacted from that housing lottery, the energy that I had. When I first got contacted, I thought I made it out the hood. I was like, "Yo,

I finally got contacted."

Janae Pierre: In Park Slope?

Speaker B: I was at work, working a shift. I kid you not, I didn't pay nothing no mind. I was actually pretty upset that day. I got a text message from my phone saying that I have a notification on Housing Connect. I go and check immediately, and I was telling my coworker, "Yo, I'm finally moving." I'm walking around, I'm smiling all day. All the tenants are noticing I have this such good energy. I ended up getting a raise coincidentally around the time that housing lottery hit me up, and it jumped my income out of my income bracket. First, they ask you for a first round of documents, then they ask you for a second round of documents. During the second round of documents, they said, "Hey, we noticed your pay stubs. There's a jump in pay. We can't really give you the apartment." They said, "If you had more people living in your household, we would give it to you, but it's nothing we can really do here. You can try to appeal it, but--"

Janae Pierre: The income bracket for one bedrooms, sometimes it seems like, "Who's this for?"

Troy Kingston: That's what it felt like. I made a video about this. It's like a working homeless gap. Sometimes you make too much to qualify for a lot of affordable housing, but you make too little to actually qualify for a lot of these lotteries. There's not a lot of percentages of apartments for that lower middle income in New York City. I feel like it's a problem that is very frequent in these housing lotteries. I've been denied from four housing lotteries.

Janae Pierre: No.

Troy Kingston: They weren't all through Housing Connect, but almost all of them exclusively had to do with income and household size. My most recent one was actually in Hudson Yards.

Janae Pierre: Another nice one.

Troy Kingston: Nice neighborhood. I would never complain if I lived in a neighborhood, but they actually hit me up and said, "Hey, even though you applied for this and technically you're in the income range, your household size is too small.

Janae Pierre: Now you have to live with Casper the Friendly Ghost, who also has a pay stub.

Troy Kingston: At that point, it's like, do I have to have kids? What do I do to get these apartments?

Janae Pierre: You mentioned that you were denied four times. I don't know how I could take that type of rejection. How did you bounce back from that?

Troy Kingston: The first time, I took it with a grain of salt. The first time I actually got denied was from a building in the Bronx. The second one was actually the Douglas Street Apartments. That one in Park Slope was an emotional roller coaster, just because for me, that was a perfect neighborhood. I was like, "Oh, I'm right near the Barclays Center. I'm right near downtown Brooklyn. It's a beautiful, brand-new building. I would have nothing to complain about. I would get to work extremely fast." When I got denied from there, it made me think, "Am I working too much? What am I doing wrong?" Damn, I don't even know if I could live in New York soon. I'm a doorman and concierge at an apartment complex. It really sucks.

Janae Pierre: Did that cross your mind? Moving out of the city?

Troy Kingston: Yes. At one point, I was going to move to New Jersey. I gave myself a window. If I couldn't find anything, I would bite the bullet and move to New Jersey. I'm happy that I did find something. Then it's crazy too, because I'm thinking, "Oh, maybe I could move directly across the water." You look directly across the water--

Janae Pierre: It's not that easy.

Troy Kingston: Jersey is expensive.

Janae Pierre: Jersey is mad expensive.

Troy Kingston: And it's far.

Janae Pierre: Man, five years is a long time to look for housing. I'm hearing so much has changed. You were even considering moving to New Jersey. What else changed for you in that process?

Troy Kingston: My standards for an apartment changed. When I lived in a room, I felt like it became my depression room. It's something that a lot of people don't talk about. When you live in such a small space, sometimes it can damage your mental. When my room was my everything room. I had my computer in there, I had my bed in there. I didn't really have space to move around. I had tons of clothes in an area.

Janae Pierre: Did it feel like it was closing in on you?

Troy Kingston: It felt like it was closing in on me. I always just felt like it would make me become lazy and just unmotivated. I felt like if I lived in a studio, I would get that same feeling of I'm in a room, and I feel like it would slowly make me go into a darker place. I would just be like, "Man, I just see everything in one place." One bedroom separates that. I like that where I'm at now, I have a living room that is actually big and separated from the kitchen. It makes me feel so much better. When you can cook exactly across from where you eat at, it makes you feel some type of way.

Over time, I started going, "No, I'm not going to just take anything they throw at me. I want something that really is affordable and something that's going to work for me." I feel like a studio can work for you if you're an outdoorsy person, but if you're not an outdoorsy person at times, it could feel like you're entrapped in a small space.

Janae Pierre: I'm really listening to you, and there's a lesson here about persistence. I'm wondering if you could go back and talk to your 18-year-old self when you first started looking for your apartment, and give 18-year-old Troy a list of dos and don'ts. What would you say?

Troy Kingston: First, I would tell him that saving is everything. You can do everything right, but if you don't have the money up front, you're not getting that apartment. The second thing is be on top of it every day. I would have days where I would be like, "Eh, I don't feel like looking for apartments. I don't feel like doing anything." In those days, you need to be consistent. You need to look at every resource that you possibly can to try to get an apartment. Even if that is doing the footwork and walking around, and looking at buildings.

I would also tell my 18-year-old self that it's okay if the first apartment doesn't go through because it really hurt me when I got denied for the first time.

Janae Pierre: And for it to happen three additional times after that.

Troy Kingston: Yes, three additional times. My grandma told me, "Hey, it's going to come. It's going to happen." My grandma related to me a lot because she got evicted from her place, and it was hard for her to find a place when her landlord kicked her out. Being in a positive mindset that the apartment will come to you, but you just need to wait, take your time, and if the apartment is meant for you, it's meant for you.

I think overall, just creating a schedule for yourself. You need to be able to take time for yourself to actually apartment hunt. The people who get apartments, they do the work in of-- even clicking apply is the first doing the work. It doesn't seem like a lot, but you putting your name out there for all of these waiting lists for all of these apartments, it really does help. It might not get you an apartment a year from now or two years, but four years from when I put in that application for MHR management, they got back to me. That's what I would tell my 18-year-old self. It just takes time, dedication and have your savings ready, have your money ready and it's not going to happen overnight.

Janae Pierre: I certainly thank you for sharing your story with us, and I truly, truly, truly am super happy for you. Congrats once again.

Troy Kingston: Thank you so much.

Janae Pierre: That's Troy Kingston. You can follow him on Instagram @scourgebliss. Troy's journey, bouncing between sublets, knocking on doors, DMing brokers, and trying Housing Connect, definitely shows how complicated finding stable housing in New York City can be. Why does it feel so hard in the first place, and what can New Yorkers do to make it easier on ourselves? Leah Goodridge is a housing lawyer and a former member of the Rent Guidelines Board. Leah, when you hear a story like Troy's, a story about someone spending years moving between sublets and chasing leads, how typical is that story in New York City right now?

Leah Goodridge: Very, very typical. The more common story is someone who is in an apartment that has its issues, like bad conditions, but they're stuck there because they can't find anything cheaper.

Janae Pierre: Why is this constantly happening?

Leah Goodridge: We don't have enough affordable housing. At the same time, we also have a housing crunch. Some will say that the answer is just to build more housing, but I want to tack onto that and say it's also that that housing that's being built needs to actually be affordable.

Janae Pierre: Yes, for sure. All right. Let's play a quick game. We're going to call this game Keys or No Keys. I'm sure you haven't played it. We legit just made it up. All right. I'll give you a scenario that may come up for someone in the hunt for affordable housing, and you can tell me if it's totally allowed, if it's risky, or if it's just simply a no-go.

Leah Goodridge: My answer is either allowed, risky, or no-go.

Janae Pierre: Yes. All right. Picture you find a unit on Housing Connect that you really like, and you meet the income requirement on paper, but you got lucky, and your pay stubs show that overtime that you got last week, which then disqualifies you. Is that fair?

Leah Goodridge: They will calculate your overall annual salary. This comes up sometimes where some people, they don't necessarily have an annual salary. If they're a home health aide, they might have temp work. They will calculate everything for all of the household that you're applying for. Whatever it shows overall for a year, if you're above that rental guidelines that they have, then unfortunately, yes.

Janae Pierre: I asked that because Troy, who we just heard from, was contacted for the Affordable Housing Lottery in Park Slope. He submitted his documents, and then he got a raise, and that pushed him over the income ceiling, and then he got denied. That totally sucks, but it's allowed. All right, this is another scenario here. You walk into a building, like Troy did, and a doorman tells you that there may be a unit available in this building. What do you do with that information?

Leah Goodridge: You literally try to apply that same day. You get the information either from the doorman, or you have the address, so you punch it in Google to see how you submit the information, and you submit it immediately. The reason why is that I would say maybe seven years ago, five years ago, when people were apartment hunting, there used to be a thing where, oh, you had a day or two, and you could apply, or you could come back, or you could think about it. That doesn't exist today.

Janae Pierre: No. Units are [crosstalk] gone same day.

Leah Goodridge: You have to snag them up. You have to act on it immediately if you're interested.

Janae Pierre: That's allowed, folk. Go out there, get to making friends with the concierge or the doorman for sure.

Leah Goodridge: Or sometimes they still have those signs on the side of buildings, of call if you're interested, and they have the contact number. Call immediately.

Janae Pierre: Another scenario, you apply for a rent-stabilized unit on Housing Connect, you get an offer, but then the building management says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, this isn't actually a rent-stabilized unit." What's the deal there?

Leah Goodridge: Number one, you can look up and see if they're telling the truth or not. There is a way where you can see if a unit is rent-stabilized or not. Obviously, if you're the existing tenant, if you're not an applicant, and you're unsure if your unit is rent-stabilized, you can actually ask for information from DHCR, and they will mail you the rent registration. There's also a website, it's called Am I Rent Stabilized? If you punch in that address, they'll be able to tell you. Normally buildings that were built before 1974 and they have six units or more, there's a high likelihood that it's going to be rent-stabilized.

I have literally been apartment hunting, and I know that the place is rent-stabilized because I look up, I can see when it was built. It's a big building. I'm like, "This place is rent-stabilized." I'll ask. I'll play silly. I'm not like, "I'm a tenant attorney." They'll be like, "No, actually it's not."

Janae Pierre: Wow.

Leah Goodridge: They'll look me in-

Janae Pierre: Lie to your face.

Leah Goodridge: - my eye and lie to my face because they don't want people to know that they have a rent-stabilized unit. The first thing I would say is to go and check to see if that's true. Then the second is what your rights are. Your rights are limited if you haven't signed anything. If you signed something, and at the time you sign it, they said it's rent-stabilized, and then after you sign it, they say, "Actually, it's not." Regardless of if it is or not, you do have some legal recourse into someone inducing you to sign an agreement for a product, or essentially, the product here is housing, where it's vastly different from what they presented it as.

Janae Pierre: Dear listeners, take notes here. Check out amirentstabilized.com. One last scenario, similar to the first. You're applying to an affordable unit on Housing Connect, but your income is just above the requirement, like under $500 above. Do you have any options here?

Leah Goodridge: No. Let me just say your option here is to stay out of jail. That's what your option is. What some people do, and unfortunately, they think that they're carving out a deal and advocating for themselves, but it's actually a crime, on both ends, is they work out a side deal. They say, "Hey, this apartment, this guideline, this goes for this amount. I make $1,000 more, $500 more. I will pay you extra on the side, but we can use whatever this income so it looks like I'm eligible, and then I'll just pay you extra on the side. You, landlord, you get to keep the money, and then I get to have the apartment I wanted."

That's called fraud, and people get caught up with that quite a bit. Let me just be clear. I'm not telling anyone to commit any crime. What I'm saying is, especially when you're dealing with any apartment that's subsidized, especially if it's federally. Now we're getting a federal crime, but a city or state, you don't want to get caught up in anything that could be fraud.

Janae Pierre: I just wrote down no-go.

Leah Goodridge: No-go.

Janae Pierre: All right. Thanks for playing this little game with me. To all the people, all the listeners right now, in the middle of a long apartment hunt like Troy was, any words of encouragement for them? I told Troy, "Listen, this is a true lesson in persistence." Any encouragement that you have for listeners?

Leah Goodridge: I would say use your own resources. If you have a friend or you have friends and they live in a building that you would want to live in, then ask, "Do you know anyone who's moving out? Do you know anything?" Now, sometimes people don't want to live in the building with their friends. Sometimes they do. Don't forget that even in this day and age, with everything, with AI, with technology, with social media, that sometimes those personal connections are the ones that went out.

Do you know a friend of a friend? Do you know anyone who has an apartment or who's moving out? Also, if that tenant gets along with the landlord, sometimes they don't want to go through a whole rigmarole of trying to find someone, so they're like, "Oh, well, you've got to--"

Janae Pierre: If you vouch for them.

Leah Goodridge: You get a built-in recommendation. All right.

Janae Pierre: Troy mentioned that his search was five years.

Leah Goodridge: Wow.

Janae Pierre: Five years for affordable housing unit.

Leah Goodridge: For the affordable one, it can take a very long time.

Janae Pierre: I was going to ask, is there an average length that people should expect from a search for affordable housing?

Leah Goodridge: It's so funny. I did a workshop with HPD, which are the housing lottery folks, and I had them come into the Brooklyn Public Library, where I asked them all these questions. I won't lie, it's not great answers, which is that it's a crapshoot. It literally is a lottery. It could take a very short amount of time or a very long amount of time because it's literally a lottery. They literally just pick a number. Out of all the people who apply on time, you get your applications in, they just pick a number.

Janae Pierre: Wow.

Leah Goodridge: Then that's it.

Janae Pierre: No strategy, nothing.

Leah Goodridge: I think some people think, "Oh, if I call, if I do this--" According to them, they just pick a number.

Janae Pierre: Wow.

Leah Goodridge: Prayer doesn't.

Janae Pierre: Prayer and luck. All right. That's Leah Goodridge. She's a housing lawyer and former member of the Rent Guidelines Board. Leah, thanks so much for joining us again.

Leah Goodridge: Thank you so much for having me.

Janae Pierre: I'm Janae Pierre. Thanks for listening to NYC Now.

 

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