In 2020, Thelma Rose Annan moved into her Manhattan apartment paying $1,882 a month in rent. In 2021, it was $2,400 per month. This year, it went up another $1,100, bringing his monthly rent to a whopping $3,500.
“This jump increase is too much and I simply cannot afford it,” says Annan.
Rising prices led her to leave the city. “I’ll put my stuff in storage and go to Europe and work remotely there,” he says. “And we expect housing to calm down in New York.”
Along with rising rental prices, New York renters face another challenge: the requirement to earn 40 times their rent when applying for an apartment. With the average asking rent in Manhattan around $4,000, the minimum income to get an average apartment is $160,000.
If an applicant does not meet this requirement, they must find a guarantor who makes at least 80 times the rent to cosign their lease.
“When I first moved into this apartment, it was $1,882 a month and I was making $65,000,” Annan says. “I had the privilege of paying that rent requirement. But since it wasn’t 40 times, I needed a guarantee.”
She says it was an embarrassing thing to deal with as a 29-year-old with a master’s degree. “I proved that I can do it on my own. But there’s an obstacle here that doesn’t make sense and seems very classist to push certain people,” he says.
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