The city beckons to anyone with a dream.

The magnetic pull that is New York City draws the artist, the entrepreneur, wanderer and scholar in seeming equal parts. The city is expensive everyone says, nothing is affordable. In a collective shrug they still come, determined to find a way to pay.

Singer and songwriter, Chris Walton, found a way. In his late thirties, the former New Jersey resident now shares a Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment with two roommates he met through a Facebook apartment-search group.

“I always wanted to move to New York but kept putting it off because I didn’t know what it would be like,” he said. “I thought I would never be able to afford it.”

But afford it he did, joining a steadily growing number of adults who have turned to sharing their living space with someone they are not related to or in a relationship with in order to make the city of $3000 one-bedrooms and $2000 studios more affordable.

According to the latest census numbers, an estimated 81,000 adults or 3 percent of Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents either share with a roommate or board in someone’s home. That number jumps to 6 percent in Manhattan where over 103,000 adult residents of the 1.6 million population share their space with a non-relative.

Queens, the second most populous borough of 2.3 million residents, shows an estimated 50,000 adults sharing living space followed by the Bronx of 1.4 million with about 14,000 sharing. Staten Island has a population of just under 500,000 with an estimated 1200 adults sharing.

The national average of 1.9 percent of home-sharing adults contrasts sharply with Manhattan at three times that number. Across the bridge in Brooklyn, developers, landlords and almost anyone with a spare room to rent scramble to house the influx of newly employed or recently relocated adults in search of housing and their New York experience.

While these numbers are conservative with real estate groups placing the total number of adults sharing with roommates closer to over 30 percent of the city’s renting population, the overall consensus is that the trend is growing rapidly with little end in sight.

Real estate sales associate, Louise Beasley of Warren Lewis Sotheby’s International Realty in Brooklyn said she knows of the intense demand for affordable living space that has swept Brooklyn in recent years.

“Bushwick, Brownsville – some parts now marketed as Ocean Hill.., Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights are where the roommates are,” she said.

Beasley’s office serves the high-rental Sunset Park neighborhood and pricier Park Slope area where the cost of apartments are more comparable to Manhattan’s higher rates.

“What we have here are mostly buyers who look for tenants and occasionally older owners or renters who look for roomers because of loneliness,” she said.

The trend of older renters or homeowners sharing their homes with younger adults has caught on over the years through programs like short-term Airbnb rentals and longer term housing arrangements through organizations such as the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens’ Home Sharing Program.

Under the Senior Citizen’s program, both host and applicant undergo detailed background checks and complete compatibility surveys and in-person meetings to ensure the best possible match. The home sharing program is seen as a good option for apartment-seekers and owners looking for reduced rent and/or companionship in a relatively safe environment.

And safety is a big concern in a crowded, glittering city like New York. As gentrification transforms large swaths of formerly high-crime or long-abandoned neighborhoods, some real estate impersonators are either swindling newcomers online or renting apartments in neighborhoods that still have a long way to go to be deemed safe.

Walton spoke about the many scam sites he encountered online while searching “all day, every day” for over a month for an apartment. He said many were asking for money to be sent upfront to secure apartments but some quick research would show they were not legitimate sites.

When Walton, who already worked in Manhattan and commuted daily to an office in Midtown, finally took the plunge to follow his dream of living in the city, he was shocked at the asking prices for apartments.

“When I put in my price range of the $1000 that I wanted to spend for a room, I got zero results,” he said, laughing. “It was $1200-1500 for just a room, not an apartment.”

“I paid $600 for a studio in New Jersey so I thought $1000 was plenty,” he said. “I still think it’s a lot.”

He was  finally  able to negotiate close to that amount to sublet a bedroom in a 3-bedroom apartment.

Walton  emphasized that the process is not easy, nor is it ideal sharing with two people, especially since he has a cat that now has to stay confined to the bedroom at all times. But he still feels lucky to have found an affordable place in a decent neighborhood, close to the train station and now spends a lot of time just riding the subway to random stops in different boroughs, exploring and enjoying the city.

“The unlimited metrocard is dangerous,” he laughed.

Glenroy Anderson in his 2-bedroom Canarsie apartment that he shares with one roommate. Photo by Karen Camela Watson

On the other side of Brooklyn in suburban Canarsie, 45-year-old Glenroy Anderson shares his 2-bedroom apartment with another male roommate who needed a place to live.

“Canarsie is a peaceful neighborhood, very quiet, I like it here,” he said.

With an average commute of an-hour-and-a-half by bus and subway to midtown Manhattan, and limited available apartments, the rent is lower there than the rest of the borough.

Anderson admits that having a roommate does help with his living costs but said that was not the main reason he decided to share.

“I am a single guy,” he said. “It’s good having someone to talk to sometimes.”

The post Living in the city of dreams means some adults must seek roommates appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

It’s not quite an art gallery, not quite a language school, and not quite a music venue.

But El Taller Latino-Americano is a little bit of all those things, and most of all it has become a cultural institution on the Upper West Side over the last two decades. With rising rents, it’s about to be driven out of the area.

“Despite the fact that we are a not-for-profit educational organization, the rent which we engage in with the landlord is commercial,” said Bernardo Palombo, a founder of El Taller.

It’s expected to rise from $8000to $22,000 per month next year.

“What for us is human space is for others mathematics and numbers,” said Palombo.

This is not the first time Manhattan’s property market has forced them to move.

El Taller: language, culture and community on 104th Street from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

They started out on 19th Street and 7th Avenue almost 35 years ago, before moving a little further uptown, then across to the basement of a Russian cathedral in the Lower East Side. They’ve been in their current space on 104th Street and Broadway for the last 22 years.

“Now we are here, and probably next year we will be in Canada, because the whole history of gentrification pushes people to el norte, so we are going to el norte again,” said Palombo.

He has a plan for El Taller – to develop an urban garden, community kitchen, centre for immigrants’ rights and a three-penny university – if he can find a way to stay in the building.

The three-penny university would include workshops from current and former Columbia University professors and community members.

“Dona Maria, a Puerto Rican woman who lives next to my house, will teach handy 22 point crochet,” said Palombo, “And the younger characters that are selling drugs in the avenue will teach texting to the old farts like me.”

El Taller has submitted the proposal to two different arts foundations, suggesting they buy the building and help expand the organization.

But if the rent rises as expected, it is likely Palombo and El Taller will have to find a new home for these big ideas to unfold.

The post El Taller Latino-Americano faces eviction appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Alex Johnson, who has lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn for ten years, points out new housing near the Kosciusko train stop. Photo by Gabrielle A. Wright.

Bushwick 1 – Second Audio

Residents of Bushwick on gentrification

Looting, fires and closed down business brought Bushwick, Brooklyn to a standstill during the historic black out of 1977. But ash and vacant buildings are fertile ground for revival. Since then, Bushwick has become a magnet for struggling artists and Williamsburg overflow, and now like most gentrifying neighborhoods across the nation: a clash of cultures and agendas.

“The population changed,” said resident Alex Johnson, 36. Looking out the window and firmly planted against the sway of the J train, he pointed out new housing developments as they whizzed by. But it isn’t just new developments that have taken over, a neighborhood that was primarily black and Hispanic for decades is seeing an influx of white residents.

“This is one of the closest [neighborhoods] to Manhattan so there’s a lot of white people in the area now,” said Johnson. According to the U.S. Census, non-Hispanic white population more than tripled between 2000 and 2010.

Johnson said with his new neighbors comes more police and organic food stores.
“They got a lot of things that haven’t been here five years ago,” he said.

Beneath the Flushing Avenue elevated train stop on the JMZ train lines are bars and cafes retrofitted into spaces that once belonged to family owned businesses. Street vendors sell the same goods sold in the Walgreens they’re set up in front of and an IHOP, not yet two years old, shares the block with small delis selling similar breakfast items.

Between the Flushing Avenue and Kosciusko Street stops along the J line, older residents say Bushwick is truly found on side streets like Hart or Dodworth where residents have childhood memories and have seen the streets go from drug infestation to “ghost-town”. Yet, newer, younger residents point towards a different Bushwick, found in loft spaces turned into farms and auxiliary art projects near the L’s Jefferson Street stop. The train lines stretching and screeching across Bushwick dot the gradient of gentrification throughout the neighborhood.

Each train stop spills out Bushwick newbies attracted by affordable housing and art gallery space alongside long-time residents with a hunch their rent may be going up soon. As Johnson, who has lived in Bushwick for ten years, stepped onto the J’s Kosciusko Avenue platform he grimaced at the renovated spaces on the avenue.

“Money makers are coming out here and can rent an apartment for $2500,” said Johnson.
“Affordable housing so they say. Section 8 doesn’t apply to that which is what we need. We can’t afford that,” he said.

According to PropertyShark.com’s Brooklyn home price map, homes in Williamsburg, the gentrified neighborhood next to Bushwick, are priced 174% more than they were in 2004. In Bushwick, the increase is by 14%. Condos are selling fast but Johnson said the increased rent and influx of new residents prices long-time Bushwick residents out. As rent goes up, businesses close down or move out.

“We may not be able to stay here,” said Lars Kremer, founder of Airplane, an art gallery on Jefferson Street . “There are four new buildings going up. We’re probably going to have 200 new people on the block by the end of this year. A new bar just opened up down the street,” he said.

Kremer has lived in Bushwick since 2000.
“I’ve seen it change a lot,” he said. “In many ways it will be good because of the increased exposure, but then there is also the looming threat of rent increase that might happen. I have mixed feelings about Bushwick,” he said.

The increased exposure has brought The Center for Urban Future’s 2012 State of the Chains study reports that there is a 2.6% increase in the number of chain stores across Brooklyn. Fifty-five chain stores are in Bushwick. An additional 34 chains are shared by both Williamsburg and Bushwick where the 11206 zip code is shared.

For Meagan Davis, a newcomer to Bushwick from Dallas, Texas, there are just enough familiar coffee shops and stores with newly hung drywall to not ruin the “gem” of her new home. However, if it becomes too much like Williamsburg, Bushwick’s gentrified neighbor, she would move.

“Williamsburg just doesn’t have enough grit,” said Davis, who has been in Bushwick for about six months. “Williamsburg is like Disney Land. Bushwick still has family, still has grit. Bushwick has something that to me is just real,” she said.

To Johnson, that “realness” is just a freak show for new residents. Beneath the Myrtle Avenue stop on the J line, a woman who was visibly incoherent rolled around on the ground reaching for her purse as stereotypical hipsters stepped around her.

“You’re in the hood, you see what’s going on, that’s real,” said Johnson, who believes Bushwick is becoming more racist. “They’re scared so they keep walking,” he said.

Torn between the pros and cons in his neighborhood, Johnson believes that gentrification in Bushwick can be felt more than it is seen. He said drug dealers weren’t on his corner anymore, but on the other hand, the family-owned dry cleaners that would clean clothes for free were also gone.

“They’re taking the danger out of Bushwick but taking the people out with it,” said Johnson.

The post Bushwick’s “revival” brings new faces, rent hikes and rapid change appeared first on Pavement Pieces.