This is how it starts. . .

Shady surveyors out front, measuring your building with their weird little gadgets and lying about being from the "insurance company." Groups of Hasidim congregating in your normally um, unenlightened-when-it-comes-to-other-cultures, landlord's apartment, and the strange guy she moved in across the hall, who's always accompanied by his weirdly hostile mother. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing my landlord's selling the building and they're getting ready to boot us. 

Jeremiah's Vanishing New York posted rumors about a 5 Leaves outpost opening around the corner and that all the building owners along Union and North 11th had been approached about selling. I know people have been asking my landlady to sell for years and up until now she's always resisted.

But with Williamsburg so short on luxury housing for unrepentant yuppie jackasses, who could blame a developer for wanting to fill a need. An apartment in the lot that used to house the Fart Cloud Building next door recently sold for nearly three-quarters of a million bucks. I wonder if that new neighbor is the asshole who lets her purebred cats wander the neighborhood and then spends hours yowling at top volume for them to come home, or if it's the jackass who locks her dog out in the courtyard until he goes hoarse from barking? 

The people who live in my building are all employed, but I doubt any of us can afford an $800,000 one-bedroom apartment. Perhaps we could all chip in together and take turns sleeping in shifts. When is New York going to run out of people who think $4500 a month is an acceptable rent on a one-bedroom apartment that's not right on Central Park, equipped with a doorman who rubs your feet and tells you you're pretty? Because with those perks I could see it, if not afford it. Maybe the new owners can convince some of those brave "pioneers" who bravely moved into The Edge way back in 2011 to move a couple blocks east. I don't know who's going to be living here once they get rid of us. But I'm pretty sure it won't be anyone I know. 

Comments

[John Ronan]

If you are a rent stabilized tenant, you can hold out for big buyout.

[Brenda from Flatbush]

Your blog is new to me, but love your writing. That is one elegant, true, and timely rant (and funny, too, as all good rants should be). Good luck on your future housing situation, which is where the funny ends, of course...