Beautiful old apartment with flaws, cruel greedy landlord
Pros
Beautiful street, nice detail and character in the apartment. Nice light and room on fire escape for plants.
Cons
The noise from upstairs was not always great(loud footsteps) and Manhattan Ave was pretty loud but we learned to live with it. Power for our apartment was on the same breaker as upstairs, and would often go out during the summer when window air conditioners were running. Landlord blamed us for power going out saying “don’t do it again.” An electrician said the power breaker was “prewar” and needed a replacement but the landlord refused to fix it. Building had roaches and mice and foyer always smelled like roaches. Found a huge roach in our bed one night! Landlord continuously raised rent by large amounts with no explanation and no work done on the apartment. Very difficult to get the landlord to fix things and she would often blame tenants for the building’s issues. Some neighbors had a party one night and apparently a bottle was dropped from fire escape- landlord then blamed us with zero evidence(we weren’t even in town) and began harassing us with 30 day notices. Eventually lawyers ended up in court- landlord tried to raise the rent to $2300 ($800 more then what our rent costed three years earlier.) The lawyers came to the conclusion we would have to pay $1900 per month snd had four months to vacate, so we were essentially kicked out for NO reason. Eventually she did the same to other lovely tenants in the building- all because she wanted to raise rent, so she had no problem throwing people out. On the day we were meant to be out we realized we had left some important family heirlooms there and tried to get them back. We asked and asked and never got them back- almost positive the landlord either stole them or threw them in the trash. Cruel and greedy old woman.
Advice to the owners
You’re the worst kind of landlord and should not be one.