renters who scored deals during pandemic are facing rent renewal sticker shock

[Demovictory9]

The New York Dream of Cheap Rent and No Roommates? It’s Over.
The city is thriving, but many who scored a deal now face rent-renewal sticker shock. Rents rose 33 percent between January of 2021 and January this year, according to an online listing site.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/realestate/nyc-rent-cost.html


Chelcie Parry had to pack up and leave an apartment after the rent rose to $3,450 — just shy of double what she was paying.Credit...George Etheredge for The New York Times


But as the city thrives again, many who scored a sweet deal now face rent-renewal sticker shock — rents have risen 33 percent, and a lease renewal asking double is not unheard of. Those renters have been hit with a hard reality check: The halcyon days of blasting music, letting dishes pile up in the sink and walking from the bathroom to the kitchen without a towel are over. For them, New York’s soaring real estate prices mean the only way to stay is to bunk with a roommate once again.

At the start of the pandemic, Chelcie Parry was hunkered down in a damp, two-bedroom, no-living-room apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a roommate, facing pestilence at every turn: outside was the threat of coronavirus, inside was black mold. For the pleasure, each paid $1,000.

Then in January 2021, Ms. Parry came across a studio in Manhattan’s Financial District complete with a doorman. Before the pandemic it had been listed at $2,614 a month, according to the listing website StreetEasy, now the rent was $1,750. After months of lockdowns, social distancing and working from home in her dank apartment, she jumped at the chance to live spore and roommate free.



“It felt like the closest thing that I could have to a hug at the time,” said Ms. Parry, 26. To afford it, she said, she took on another job; she works at a theater nonprofit, and at a media company. The studio felt worth the hustle: She spent her days decorating to her own taste, practicing TikTok dances free from judgmental observers and indulging her 3 a.m. Hot Pocket habit without anyone catching her in the kitchen, she said.

Then her lease renewal arrived in the mail. On April 1, the rent went up to $3,450 — just shy of double.

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She is not alone: Since this time last year, New York City rents have risen 33 percent, nearly double the national average, according to the online listing site Apartment List. In affluent neighborhoods, it’s worse: at the height of the pandemic, in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, for example, the median asking rent fell about 20 percent. Since January 2021 it has charged upward by about 40 percent in both places, according to StreetEasy.