Trying To Rent A Room In NY FOR $400 (New York, Brighton: 2014, apartments)

[JasonMazari]

Can be anywhere brooklyn ,astoria , queens , manhattan.
Where can i get a room to rent for that price $400.00 I remembered a while back as a kid i rented a room in bedstuy with my mom and i had to share a bathroom with the folks on my floor.
Is this impossible?

[Japanfan1986]

Yeah, pretty impossible. $400 really is nothing in NYC. Maybe if you have a roomate you can split a room with a roomate in one of the outer boroughs. Even then I think $500 would be more helpful than $400.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I hope this post doesn't come off as too negative. Just trying to be somewhat realistic not crap on your hopes. Check the usual online places like Craigslist, etc. and visit them. Only for shares if that's your budget. Like I said $400 for a single is pretty impossible and if you find one online it'll probably be a scam or a waste of time.

[NYer23]

Only people I know renting at $400 dollars are immigrant workers in very tight space. You would have to pay around $700 to get a room.

[Shoshanarose]

I actually think it's possible.
In one of the outer boroughs for sure: Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx.
Lots of immigrants live in large apartments where there are several/bedrooms and each one may go for $400.

If you rent a room in a large apartment or house (in one of the boroughs), you may be able to find a room for $400.
It won't be in a hip neighborhood, but with any luck, it may be in a relatively safe immigrant neighborhood.

[JasonMazari]

Originally Posted by NYer23

Only people I know renting at $400 dollars are immigrant workers in very tight space. You would have to pay around $700 to get a room.

i dont wanna live like that

[JasonMazari]

Originally Posted by Shoshanarose

I actually think it's possible.
In one of the outer boroughs for sure: Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx.
Lots of immigrants live in large apartments where there are several/bedrooms and each one may go for $400.

If you rent a room in a large apartment or house (in one of the boroughs), you may be able to find a room for $400.
It won't be in a hip neighborhood, but with any luck, it may be in a relatively safe immigrant neighborhood.

yea i did something similiar but it wasnt a messed up as in the pictures
it was a brownstone and i had a single room with a bed but it wasnt with immigrants

[psychopompos]

In 2007 I was splitting a pretty nice 3 bedroom apartment in Fresh Meadows with 3 roommates. 2 of us would have our own rooms and the other 2 would share the biggest bedroom for a semester; then we'd rotate. We were paying $450 each plus utilities. Can you do something like that 8 years later? Yeah, I think so, but it will have to be in some of the more unattractive parts of Queens or The Bronx.

[UsAll]

Originally Posted by JasonMazari

Can be anywhere brooklyn ,astoria , queens , manhattan.
Where can i get a room to rent for that price $400.00 I remembered a while back as a kid i rented a room in bedstuy with my mom and i had to share a bathroom with the folks on my floor.
Is this impossible?

Originally Posted by JasonMazari

yea i did something similiar but it wasnt a messed up as in the pictures
it was a brownstone and i had a single room with a bed but it wasnt with immigrants

To the OP:

Unless you simply move into a single apartment or a single house with whatever number of other sharers occupying the same single apartment or house (i.e., sharing an apartment or house with roommates or housemates), what you are otherwise asking about is what are usually called "Rooming Houses" (9occasionally, they are also listed as "Boarding Houses", though that might or not might be somewhat different from what "Rooming Houses" are. Sometimes they have been called SROs (or Single Room Occupancy units). It entails you having a single room living unit (or occasionally two rooms) all to yourself with no other sharers living in your living unit (just like if you had a standalone apartment of your own) but you typically have to share a bathroom in the hallway with other tenants. Some such buildings, as well, also have a communal kitchen in the hallway or on another floor shared amongst the tenants of the building, while others have no communal kitchen and the individual units typically don't come with a built-in kitchen or kitchenette but you can have a refrigerator, microwave or convection oven, hot plate, toaster over, et al in your standalone living unit (room).

I imagine that the greater NYC region at-large has not totally eliminated SRO-type rooming houses altogether over the course of time (which are kind of like dormitory-style living). I had lived in two different rooming houses in Manhattan in the 1970s and otherwise lived in my own full-fledged rented apartments and have, at times in my life, taken up living in rooming houses elsewhere in the USA.

Typically (beyond looking in newspaper classifieds such as in the New Daily News, New York Post, Village Voice, etc.), you can simply look in the "Yellow Pages" for whatever geographic jurisidction under the title or heading of "Rooming Houses". For instance, searching in Google for "Yellow Pages" brings up a host of competing Yellow Pages websites such as YP.com. Searching on that site or on other suggested sites or listings when you type "Manhattan Yellow Pages", "Queens Yellow Pages", "Brooklyn Yellow Pages", "Bronx Yellow Pages" or wherever else you want to consider (e.g., , "Jersey City Yellow Pages") in a web search engine's search field brings up a host of Yellow Pages publishing websites which each have multiple listings under "Rooming Houses". Much better than trusting whatever you might find mentioned on Craigslist.

[JosephM1994]

I know of rooming houses all over the city. You're not going to find them advertised and you're housemates are going to be, lowlifes usually with drug problems. 9/10 times there are bed bugs. You get what you pay for.

There is one in Chelsea on 8th Ave in Chelsea. It is an unmarked door that always has seedy black guys hanging out in front of it (they stick out in this area) and you walk up one flight and you can rent a room (more like a cubicle, the walls do not go all the way up to the ceiling but they have barbs on top so your "neighbor" can't clime over into your room. They have bed bugs and most residents are junkie ex con types tbh. It's a throwback from an era when there were thousands of these all up the west side. It costs $150 per week plus $50 key deposit. They advertise in the back of the Village Voice. I've had to spend two weeks here in a bind and it was gross but it got the job done and at least I wasn't homeless.

I know of another one in the city on West St in the village, $500 per month but it's mostly gay male hustlers (hookers), lots of unsavory stuff going on in there.


On Staten Island, there is a home on Slosson Terrace right by the ferry that rents rooms for $100 per week. You cannot miss the house it's an old big mansion with tin foil over the windows and a big sign that says "furnished rooms to rent inquire within" I have never stayed there.

Also on Staten Island is the Midland Motor Inn, which is known on the Island as the hotel that gets busted for heroin dealing every couple of months, but keeps reopening. I have stayed here and it's $170 per week plus a $50 deposit for a room with a bathroom. The population is 50/50 junkie types and Mexican migrant workers.


There are others, I'm sure. If you are Hispanic and speak Spanish you can find a room for that much in an apartment. Go to neighborhoods like Sunset Park along 4th Avenue or even by the Myrtle Wyckoff L/M train station and look at the signs posted on lampposts, in bodegas, and in laudromats. There are always "CUARTO PARA RENTAR" signs with a phone number. If you speak Russian go down to Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn by the B/Q stop and you will see similar signs, in Russian. If you're Muslim go to any Mosque and inquire, if you're Irish (from Ireland, not Irish American) go up to Woodlawn in the Bronx (take the 4 train to the last stop and hop on the Bx16 towards Pelham and get off at Katonah Avenue) and go in the laundromat and you will see signs on the bulletin board for room rentals fo other Irish.


Good luck.

[versicle]

There are at least a couple of big houses in my neighborhood in the Bronx that operate illegally as rooming houses. There was just a fire in one of them and something like 14 people were displaced. Aside from any questions of legality, they're unsafe.