[Excuse_Me]

Something's really fishy about this story. On the one hand, the author is saying about how wealthy a neighborhood she lives in (TriBeCa.) On the other hand, she manages to write in a filthy unoccupied apartment in her building. How does this writer manage to use this apartment? Why isn't this apartment rented out? Is she saying that the apartment manager would rather let her write in this place than rent it out? With the housing market the way it is in Manhattan, there is no way the apartment manager would keep an unoccupied apartment open, especially in this trendy neighborhood, for the benefit of some writer to use. Not when the market value for that apartment is a minimum of $2000 a month!

I wondered about that, too. But if you live in New York, and are willing to pay those kind of prices for an apartment, you've got to be a little bit twisted, IMO. So, I just shrugged it off. As for the apartment, with the damage caused by the collapse, perhaps the owner doesn't have the money to fix it up yet.

[NYCVirago]

I wondered about that, too. But if you live in New York, and are willing to pay those kind of prices for an apartment, you've got to be a little bit twisted, IMO. So, I just shrugged it off. As for the apartment, with the damage caused by the collapse, perhaps the owner doesn't have the money to fix it up yet.

Unless I missed it in the article, it didn't say that the apartment was damaged in the collapse. Manhattan is a place where the housing market is so tight that people scan the death notices to look for available apartments! I just find it very hard to believe that this apartment would be 1) unoccupied, 2) have working utilities (it may have been cold, but the author had a space heater going), and 3) be easily occupied by the author.

And one other thing -- there is rent control in New York, which means that people living in palatial apartments for many years can be paying a pittance in rent, but rent control does not go into effect until after you rent a place. This gives the apartment owner even more incentive to get an apartment on the market, as he'll be able to charge hundreds a month more than he would to longtime tenants. In summary, there are way too many holes in this writer's story; it's a good thing she published it in a British newspaper as it wouldn't make it past a Manhattan editor's bs detector!