College Students Have a Tough Time Finding Affordable Apartments
Words and photograph by Lizbeth Vazquez
Illustration by Katie Herchenroeder
“As I was getting ready to move onto an independent lifestyle, I had a really hard time trying to find a placehere in New York,” C.S. said. The former CCNY student doesn’t wantto use her real name, but explained that she felt she had to choose betweenpaying rent and going to school.
“I ended up moving to my cousin’s house,renting a place in her basement in New Jersey,” she said. C.S. looks forward tocompleting her master’s degree and she’s grateful that her cousin had justbought a house and that she can rent the basement apartment. But she wishes shecould have stayed in New York.
College students like C.S. have difficultiesfinding affordable apartments in New York City. The market rate for anapartment ranges from $2,695 in Brooklyn to $4,188 in Manhattan, according to RentCafé.com.
I interviewed New York real estateagent Eric Lewis as he showed an apartment in Brooklyn. He said, “Most of myclients are college students trying to hustle and get a degree while alsomaintaining two jobs or maybe even three.” He said they need to work a number of jobs topay the rent, “I’ve definitely seen an increase in rents … I’ve also seen thatmost of the apartments have not been fully furnished and if they do, they leavethe old paint behind the new one and floors just the same. I can only say thatNew York overall is not going to get much cheaper.”
At a meeting of the Rent GuidelinesBoard, Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society(CSS) cited a U.S. Census report that shows a decline in New York’s population.She said, “With high rent burdens and limited choice within the market, becauselow rent apartment vacancy was about two percent in 2017, many low-income NewYorkers find themselves in extremely difficult housing situations,” accordingto Curbed.
What’s a college student to do?
For New Yorkers struggling to findaffordable housing, there are some options. One is housingconnect.nyc.gov, a long- term solution where it might take a while to get a response, but itis a good resource to use. Housing Connect gives tips on how to find, search,and apply for affordable housing.
If this housing program is not foryou, here’s another suggestion: Student.com lists rooms orcheaper apartments, if you want to share an apartment with different roommates.Also, streeteasy.comis another place to find rentals. It gives you options to choose from and showsyou virtual pictures of possible rooms and apartments.
Some readers might have other ideasand we’d welcome any suggestions to make the process easier. If you have foundaffordable housing in NYC through different means, please reach out to us at ccnycampusnews@gmail.com.
