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When Lauren Holman's roommates-to-be first looked at the place on Bedford Avenue in early August 2013, construction on the building was still underway and the apartment did not yet have interior walls or a refrigerator. One apartment in the building that was serving as the demo apartment for prospective renters "had mostly everything kind of set up," and her friends who were spearheading the apartment search had an easy time filling in the blanks.
"They were like, 'Oh yeah, it’s going to be great,'" Holman recalled. "'There's going to be a gym on the roof. They still haven’t put the walls up, but it’s going to be great. It'll be awesome: a brand new building. There's not going to be cockroaches.'"
The apartments were to come wired with in-wall speakers. As the group negotiated the lease—$6,000 a month for what was to be a bilevel four-bedroom, connected by a spiral staircase—she says the building's management assured them everything would be ready by the day they moved in, at the beginning of September. They put down the first and last months' rent and a security deposit, which came to $4,500 each. Holman arrived on September 7th. She was 23 and moving to New York from Chicago for a music-industry job with Sony, and had made the 800-mile drive with her father.
"I walked in with my dad, and my dad was in shock," she remembered. The apartment, she says, was much the same as it had been a month earlier: no walls, no fridge, no gas lines, wires sticking out of walls where electric heaters and air conditioners were to be installed.
"He was like, 'I don’t know what the hell you just did.'" she said. "I was trying to keep it together."
As bizarre of a story that I've heard in some time.
This just goes to show that the hipsters in Willyburg who so often like to pretend they're poor/struggling really aren't. If at 23 you're able to come up with $4,500 cash (probably from your parents) you're a brat.
These are probably yuppies moving into the more fancier buildings there, but the point still stands...
If you read the entire linked story and or more elsewhere (and there is more, much more) there is bigger scandal than just those roommates. In fact when all is said and done expect the City and others to be sued for major money over this whole nasty business.
Long story short the CofO and building plans do not match. One of the ground floor retail tenants found this out when he began looking at how badly constructed the basement and his space was and tried to pull the blueprints from the City. He finally got them (via a FOIA request) and the plans are for another building elsewhere. Someone somehow in City government granted a CofO for a building that didn't match blueprints or have the same address.
They get little sympathy from me. Surely one of them had a parent that told them this was not right and looked into tenants rights in NYC. A simple Google search would have told them everything they needed to know. The fact that they moved in to a place without walls, 23 or not, I would have been withholding the rent from the get go until all of the work was done, or find another place and break the lease since the landlord was already in violation of it.
And how exactly was a film school student going to pay $1500 a month? You can't tell me this one wasn't getting subsidized by the bank of mom and dad.
This is why people need to do their due diligence before even thinking about moving here. For instance in some cities it's legal to make an apartment out of your basement or garage. Here it's not. (Only some basements can be legal under certain circumstances).
If you read the entire linked story and or more elsewhere (and there is more, much more) there is bigger scandal than just those roommates. In fact when all is said and done expect the City and others to be sued for major money over this whole nasty business.
Long story short the CofO and building plans do not match. One of the ground floor retail tenants found this out when he began looking at how badly constructed the basement and his space was and tried to pull the blueprints from the City. He finally got them (via a FOIA request) and the plans are for another building elsewhere. Someone somehow in City government granted a CofO for a building that didn't match blueprints or have the same address.
It's smells fishy: Corruption all over the CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY!
If you read the entire linked story and or more elsewhere (and there is more, much more) there is bigger scandal than just those roommates. In fact when all is said and done expect the City and others to be sued for major money over this whole nasty business.
Long story short the CofO and building plans do not match. One of the ground floor retail tenants found this out when he began looking at how badly constructed the basement and his space was and tried to pull the blueprints from the City. He finally got them (via a FOIA request) and the plans are for another building elsewhere. Someone somehow in City government granted a CofO for a building that didn't match blueprints or have the same address.
The building department has done something like this ...?!
Oh, tell me it isn't so.
There are stories like this around here, usually involving people with Wall Street cash needing "variances."
These people were just foolish to begin with for even agreeing to sign a lease and move into this place, regardless of who owned the property. I will say though that the Jews seem to be notorious for dragging their feet with their construction projects. They put up a new 4 story building right next to the building I'm in and it took them freakin' forever to finish that thing and get it rented considering they started the project in like Spring 2014 and that Bushwick is a hot rental market. Who knows with those guys.
These people were just foolish to begin with for even agreeing to sign a lease and move into this place, regardless of who owned the property. I will say though that the Jews seem to be notorious for dragging their feet with their construction projects. They put up a new 4 story building right next to the building I'm in and it took them freakin' forever to finish that thing and get it rented considering they started the project in like Spring 2014 and that Bushwick is a hot rental market. Who knows with those guys.
I mean, absolutely. One episode in the life of a person is definitely enough to identify a very large group of people, and "notoriously" at that.
Back in the real world. The foot dragging happens a lot around here, a few recent properties that come to mind are two owned by Chinese investors - from different ends of China - and a former Soviet (likely) gangster; then there is the Wall Street hedge fund dynamic duo, neither of whom are Jewish or Chinese or former Soviet.
So it might be a tad more complicated than you had guessed.
This just goes to show that the hipsters in Willyburg who so often like to pretend they're poor/struggling really aren't.
That Williamsburg struggling thing is so 2010.
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lyla45
