Apartment Woes

[jenny from ravenclaw]

I must vent.  Raul (my sweetie) and I have been living in a studio 
here in Manhattan for four years now.  We love our neighborhood and we 
like our apartment, but it's just too small for both of us and our cat 
Lily.  We started actively looking for a one bedroom this summer and 
we cannot find an apartment!  

Looking for an apartment in NYC is like trying to get into Harvard; 
the odds are against you.  We have seen listings for one bedrooms in 
areas like East Harlem (which is nasty) for as much as $1750 per 
month!  We aren't even looking to stay in our nice east 80s area; we 
want to move uptown, to West Harlem or Central Park North.  These are 
not fancy-shmancy areas.  Sometimes we'll call for an ad we see in the 
Times and two days later the apt is rented!  It is extremely 
frustrating, especially because we found out this morning that the one 
apt we both REALLY liked was already rented.

If Raul and I didn't both work for the city (I teach high school and 
Raul is a tennis instructor who works for the Parks Department), we'd 
make more money and brokers (who are disgusting, ask for a 15% annual 
rental fee and don't get me started) would actually return our calls.  
We both work very hard and we deserve a decent one bedroom apt, not 
dead-bugs-on-the-kitchen-floor-can-barely-fit-a-couch-in-the-living-ro
om aptartments.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

'Nuff said.

--jenny from ravenclaw **************************