Oh, poor blog. Who will update you when I freeze to death in my own home, abandoned by a landlord who doesn't live on site, doesn't pay the bills, and doesn't seem to care? Alas.
Honestly, though, the standards in New York seem atrocious. At a party on Friday night several of us wandered into the topic of apartments. Here I thought we must just have a terrible landlord, because how, how, HOW can it be normal for people to struggle to stay warm in one of the biggest, most fabulous cities in the world?! But no, it is the norm here to have landlords out to screw you of:
a) heat
b) hot water
c) heat AND hot water
d) your--always astronomically huge, I might add--damage deposit.
(And don't even think about breaking your lease, even if you are freezing to death. The landlord can sue you for the entire amount rent owed to him for the entirety of the remaining lease.) It seems criminal! (Not unlike the rents. And the very existence of cockroaches.)
Some things New York excels at: big-scale musicals, museums, parades, libraries. Other things need such a serious amount of work: acceptable levels of heat, true protection for the tenant and not just the landlord, the price per square foot of rental apartments.
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