NYC NOW - The Harsh Reality of Finding Affordable Housing in NYC: It’s… Not Easy

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Finding an affordable apartment in New York City can take years, and for many renters, the process feels confusing and out of reach. Troy Kingston, also known as @scourgebliss, shares what it took to finally land a place after years of searching, navigating housing lotteries, strict income requirements, and multiple rejections. Plus tenants rights attorney Leah Goodridge shares best practices on what to look for when searching for affordable housing. — Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail]

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. Finding affordable housing in New York City is no easy task. On today's episode, we meet a young Brooklyn night whose apartment hunt for a rent-stabilized unit took all but five years. He documented his experience on social media. Plus, some advice from a housing lawyer. That's all ahead.

But first, here's what's happening in New York City. A rally in the Bronx over the weekend is highlighting growing grassroots support for taxing New York's wealthiest residents ahead of the state budget deadline. Advocates are urging Governor Kathy Hockel to raise taxes on high earners before the April 1st deadline. Organizers say younger New Yorkers are increasingly getting involved in that push. C.J. Gallagher is a student at Lehman College and a member of its Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter. I'm excited to see a bunch of Lehman students show up and start to get involved politically, people from the Bronx showing. And yeah, I'm excited to hopefully see this momentum of pushing these taxes so that we can get better funding in our city. Gallagher helped start the campus chapter and wants to keep building momentum around the effort.

If you're flying out of a local airport this week, you may want to check ahead to see what security wait times are looking like. before you head out. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it's restored security wait time reporting to the websites of its airports after a hiatus. But the agency says wait times are still subject to rapid change based on passenger volumes and transportation security administration staffing during the partial federal government shutdown affecting TSA. The Port Authority says travelers should build in significantly more time for their trips and check with their airlines for the status of their flights. It's still March Madness, and Yukon's men's basketball stunned, top-seated Duke Sunday in the NCAA tournament.

Yukon trailed by 19 points, and they kept chipping away for the comeback as Duke collapsed. Freshman Braille and Mullins sank a desperation three-pointer with less than a second in the game for a final score of 73 to 72. Yukon will face Illinois in the final four this Saturday. Meanwhile, UCon women beat Notre Dame 70 to 52 to advance to the final four as well. The defending national champs will face their opponent on Friday. Coming up, content creator and New York City native Troy Kingston shares his five-year journey finding affordable housing. That's after a quick break. Troy Kingston is a native New Yorker.

He's a content creator and makes videos about life in New York City. Did you know there's a mansion in between Bedstine and Clinton Hill? Driving in New York sucks, and I say it all the time. If you drive in New York City, you know exactly what I'm talking about this. I'm moreover about Chelsea Manhattan, and in a few years, none of this will be here. He's been documenting his search for stable housing online, a process that started when he was 18 years old. I normally would say I would never move to the Bronx. This apartment complex might make me change my mind.

Yo, I'm in Midtown about Times Square, right? and I'm next to this new building that just went up. And now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, yo, who really want to live in Tom Square? Since then, he's bounced between sublets, knocked on doors, talked to doorman and tried everything from brokers to the city's housing lottery.

Troy's here with me now. He's 24 and just got approved. Congratulations on that and welcome. Thank you so much. And glad to be here. We're so happy to have you. So your hunt for a four, housing started at the age of 18.

What was your housing situation like then? My housing situation was rough. My mother was going through a lot, and she ended up telling me I had to go. I'm sorry to hear that. And so at that time, I didn't really know what to do. My grandma offered me to stay at her place, but it's rough living with my grandma. My grandma is a very old-fashioned woman. I mean, even though she's retired.

She was a NYPD officer And so she had a really strict clockwork schedule So y'all were buttoned heads And yeah, we were buttoned heads in there And so I put up with it for a little bit But it got to a point where I was like, yeah I can't say I can't say a grandma's Especially because, you know, it's a little cramped in there

So I was jumping house to house for a little bit I had a couple friends that helped me out My best friend, let me crash at his place for a little bit And so, you know Eventually you get to a point where somebody might go, hey, like I let you stay here for a couple days, but it's not going to really work out. I decided to get a room. Okay.

And so I was paying about $1,500 for a room. $1,500 for a room. And this was not, like, let's get a year. 20, 21. Okay. So this is like pandemic room, $1,500. Yeah, you would have thought by, like, around that time that, like, stuff would have got drastically cheap because I remember around that time, everybody was getting, like, COVID deals.

But no, not really. Not you. I didn't find anything I could afford. I just got my job as a concierge in New York City, which was a huge job for me. And so I didn't tell anybody at my job what I was going through. I didn't want to be judged. I get up and I do my 40 hours every week and I still can't find a place.

It put me in a dark spot, especially because I work in an apartment complex. Can you imagine you go and you help out tenants every day who can afford $5,000, $6,000 for a one-bedroom studio? and you have to put on this face and be happy and, you know, be and welcoming. And you don't have a place to yourself. Yeah.

So you had a five-year hunt for your apartment, your first apartment. Yes. Let's talk about that process. Were you doing that alone? Did you have a broker? What did that look like for you? So when I first went about looking at apartments, I googled what I could do to find an affordable apartment.

And it let me down the basic routes of, hey, there's housing connect. Right. That there's rents, stabilized apartments out there, and that maybe you can get some apartments who like Street Easy and Zillow. Yeah. Which quickly humbled me because then first I realized that on Housing Connect is affordable housing, but it's not always going to be in your case where, oh, you can afford to live at an apartment. I didn't even know, like, an affordable apartment could be considered $3,000. Yeah. Housing Connect is the city's housing lottery system. Yes.

And so Housing Connect, you know, was the first. first thing I started doing. And then I also realized it takes forever to actually get back to you. Yeah. You know, first you have to apply. Then you have to wait to get a log number. That log number can take forever. Then even after you get the log number, it takes them even longer to actually get the whole process done. So I went about first looking through Housing Connect. When I didn't find anything through Housing Connect, I looked through Street Easy and Zillow. And a ton of other apartment apps. I remember, I used to have a folder with all my apartment apps, and I would just go down the list every day. Like, hmm, all right, let me filter this one bedroom, one bathroom, one bathroom, or studio.

You know, I'd put my budget price. My budget price was, I would put like 1,000 to 1,300. Okay. And I would just look every day. I would usually wake up in the morning and do it. And I would check back in in the afternoon. Sometimes I would also at like the dead of night, just be like, maybe something will pop up early. Like maybe, you know, an overnight listing would pop up. Yeah. And sometimes you really would find a listing like that. I remember the first apartment I ever found that was technically rent-sabilized and cheap was through street easy.

But when I went there and I looked at the place, it was a ton of fees to actually move in. He wanted two months of rent, a security deposit, and he wanted a broker's fee. Wow. And that could easily be, what, $8,000? Yes. Yes. It was extremely pricey. I didn't have the savings. And I was like, oh, I can't afford it. Okay. So you have all these apps. What neighborhoods were you looking at? I was not exclusive to any neighborhood. You know, I feel like at one point I didn't have the choice to really be picky about where I want to live at. I was like, well, if I want to stay in New York and I can't end up living in Brooklyn anymore, I would sacrifice not living in Brooklyn. So you were on Street Easy, Zillow, Housing Connect. Did word of mouth help you at all?

The way I got my apartment actually was somewhat the word of mouth. Oh, cool. My grandmother told me that there's a ton of housing agencies that could maybe help me out. And so I began calling people and speaking and walking up to agencies asking them, like, hey, is there any affordable housing applications that you can offer me, any vacancies, anything available? And so I actually that I reached out to And I said, hey, do you guys have any one-bedroom studios or anything available? And they said, no, we don't have anything available now,

but we do get vacancy sometimes. You just need to mail a letter to us with the application. So I got the application from them, picked it up, and I mailed it off to them, which later down the line would get me in my apartment. You know, I'm listening to you talk about your experience in this process, and it legit sounds like a full-time job. You were working during a job.

all this, right? Yes. That's crazy. My coworkers can tell you, I even on the work computer, and I might get in trouble this, but even on the work computer, I was on Housing Connect every day. My coworker would always welcome to me like, Troy, like, you've been on this app refreshing it like every day. Yeah.

I'm like, yo man, like, you know, place. I mean, forums, I was digging through forums a lot. City Data Forum. It's probably the number one form that I look through every day. They have a section for affordable housing, and I would look on there every day to see if there was anything new.

If there was any building that I applied to, I would filter the search to be like, hey, let me see what this building's process is looking like. When I first got contacted for a housing lottery on Housing Connects for 336 Douglas Street Apartments in Parkeslow, Brooklyn, there was actually a forum on there. And I went in on there every day.

And I was like, hey, do you guys know the process on what's going on? When they're going to give the one bedrooms out? And it was a good forum. I mean, people on there would say, like, what log number that they were at where they got contacted? Because a log number is pretty important when you're applying the lotteries. If you have a log number of 100, you want to know, hey, did they skip past me? Because this guy got contacted, and he's number 150 in a log number.

So it was a really useful form. What made you skip out on that park slope apartment? I got denied from it. When I got contacted from that housing lottery, I, was the energy that I had when I first got contacted. I thought I made it out the hood. I was like, I was like, yo, I finally got contacted.

Yeah, I got the text. I was at work, working a shift. I kid you not. I didn't pay not in no mind. I was, you know, I was actually pretty upset that day. And I got a text message from my phone saying that I have a notification on How's it Connect. So I go and check immediately. And I'm telling my Coker, yo, I'm finally moving.

I'm walking around. I'm smiling all day. I'm like, all the tenants are noticing Like, I have this such good energy. But I ended up getting a race coincidentally around the time that housing lottery hit me up. And it jumped my income out of my income bracket. So when that happened, you know, the housing agent told me like, hey, because first they asked you for a first round of documents. Then they asked you for a second round of documents. During the second round of documents, they said, hey, we notice your pay stubs.

You know, there's a jump in pay. We can't really give you the apartment. They said, you know, if you had, you know, if you had. More people living in your household, we would give it to you, but it's nothing we can really do here. You can try to appeal it, but... Yeah. The income bracket for, like, one-bedrooms, sometimes it seems like, who's this for? That's what it felt like, you know, it feels like, and I made a video about this, it's like a working

homeless gap. Sometimes you make too much to qualify for a lot of affordable housing, but you make too little to actually qualify for a lot of these lotteries. You know, there's not a lot of percentages of apartments for that middle. income like that lower middle income in New York City and I feel like it's a problem that is very frequent in these housing lotteries I've been denied from four housing lotteries no and they weren't all through housing connects but almost all of them exclusively had to do with income and household size my most recent one was actually in Hudson Yards another nice one nice neighborhood I would

never complain if I lived in a neighborhood but they actually hit me up and said hey even know, like, you applied for this and, you know, um, technically you're in the income range, your household size is too small. So now you have to live with Casper, the friendly ghost who also has a paste up. Yeah. So, like, at that point, it's like, what do I, like, do I start, do I have to have kids? Like, do I, like, what do I, like, what do I do I do I, like, what do I do to get these apartments? So you mentioned that you were denied four times. I don't know how I could take that type of rejection. How did you bounce back from that? Well, the first time I took it with a grain of salt. The first time I actually got denied was from a building in a Bronx. The second one

was actually the Douglas Street Apartments. That one was, and you know, in Park Soap was an emotional roller coaster just because for me, that was like a perfect neighborhood. I was like, oh, I'm right near the Barclay Center. I'm right near downtown Brooklyn. It's a beautiful brand new building. I would have nothing to complain about. I would get to work extremely fast. You know, and when I got denied from there. It made me think, am I working too much? Like, what am I doing wrong? Like, damn, I don't even know if I could live in New York soon and I'm a dormant and concierge at an apartment complex. It really sucks. Did that cross your mind, like moving out of the city? Yes. At one point, I was going to move to New Jersey. I gave myself a window. If I couldn't find anything, I would bite

the bullet and move to New Jersey. I'm happy that I did find some. And then, you know, it's crazy, too, because I think, you know, I'm thinking, oh, maybe I can move directly across the water. You look directly across the water. It's not that easy. Jersey is expensive. Jersey's mad expensive. And it's far. Man, five years is a long time to look for housing. And I'm hearing like so much has changed, like you were even considering moving to New Jersey. What else changed for you in that process? My standards for an apartment changed. So, you know, when I lived in a room, I felt like it became my depression room. And it's something that a lot of people don't talk about. When you live in such a small space sometimes, it can kind of damage your mental. My room was my everything

room. I had my computer in there. I had my bed in there. I didn't really have space to move around. I had tons of clothes in an area. Did it feel like it was closing in on it? It felt like it was closing in on me. And I always just felt like it would make me become lazy and just unmotivated. So I felt like if I lived in a studio, I would get that same feeling of I'm in a room and I just, I, you know, I feel like it would slowly make me go into a darker place. Like, I would just be like, man, like, I don't have, like, I just see everything in one place. And so, you know, one bedroom kind of separates that. I like that where I'm at now. I have a living room that is actually big and separated from the kitchen. It makes me feel so much better. When you can cook exactly like across from

where you eat at, it kind of makes you feel some type of way. Yeah. So over time, I started going now, I'm not going to just take anything they throw out me. I want something that really is affordable and something that's going to work for me. Especially, I feel like a studio can work for you if you're an outdoorsy person. But if you're not an outdoorsy person at times, yeah, it could kind of feel like you're entrapped in a small space. Yeah. I'm really listening to you and there's like a lesson here about persistence. And I'm wondering if you could go back and talk to your 18-year-old self, you know, when you first started looking for your apartment and give 18-year-old Troy a list of do's and don'ts. What would you say?

First, I would tell him that saving is everything. You can do everything right, but if you don't have the money up front, you're not getting that apartment. The second thing is be on top of it every day. You know, I would have days where I would, you know, be like, eh, I don't feel like looking for apartments. I don't feel like doing anything. And in those days, you need to be consistent. You need to look at every resource that you possibly can to try to get an apartment. Even if that is doing the footwork and walking around and looking at buildings.

Yeah. I would also tell my 18-year-old self that it's okay if the first apartment doesn't go through because it really hurt me when I got denied for the first time. And for it to happen three additional times after that. And, you know, my grandma told me like, hey, like, it's going to come. It's going to happen. And my grandma related to me a lot because she got evicted from her place. And it was hard for her to find a place when her landlord kicked her out.

So being in a positive mindset that the apartment will come to you, but you just need to wait, take your time. And if the apartment is meant for you, it's meant for you. Yeah. And I think overall just creating a schedule for yourself. You need to be able to take time for yourself to actually apartment hunt. You know, the people who get apartments, they do the working of, Even clicking Apply is the first doing a work. It doesn't seem like a lot,

but you putting your name out there for all of these waiting lists, for all of these apartments, it really does help. It might not get you an apartment a year from now or two years, but four years from when I put in that application for MHR management, they got back to me. Yeah. So, you know, that's what I would tell my 18-year-old self.

It just takes time, dedication, and have your savings ready, have your money ready. and it's not going to happen overnight. Well, I certainly thank you for sharing your story with us, and I truly, truly, truly am super happy for you. So congrats once again. Thank you so much. That's Troy Kingston.

You can follow them on Instagram at Scourge Bliss. Yeah. So Troy's journey, bouncing between sublets, knocking on doors, DMing brokers, and trying Housing Connect definitely shows how complicated finding stable housing in New York City can be. But why does it feel so hard in the first place? And what can New Yorkers do to make it easier on ourselves?

Leah Goodrich is a housing lawyer and a former member of the Rink Guidelines Board. So, Leo, when you hear a story like Troy's, a story about someone spending years moving between sublets and chasing leads, how typical is that story in New York City right now? Very typical. Very, very typical. The more common story is someone who is in an apartment that has its issues like conditions, bad conditions. But they're stuck there because they can't find anything cheaper.

Why is this constantly happening? We don't have enough affordable housing. At the same time, we also have a housing crunch. So some will say that the answer is just to build more housing. but I want to tack on to that and say it's also that that housing that's being built needs to actually be affordable. Yeah, for sure. All right. So let's play a quick game.

We're going to call this game, keys or no keys. I'm sure you haven't played it. Okay. We legit just made it up. Okay. All right. So I'll give you a scenario that may come up for someone in the hunt for affordable housing. And you can tell me if it's totally allowed, if it's risky, or if it's just simply a no-go.

Okay. So my answer is, even if it's just. allowed, risky, or no-go. Okay. All right. So picture you find a unit on Housing Connect that you really like, and you meet the income requirement on paper, but, you know, you got lucky and your pay stubs show that overtime that you got last week, which then disqualifies you.

Is that fair? Yeah, they will calculate your overall, like, annual salary. And so this comes up sometimes. where some people, they don't necessarily have an annual salary. They're working, like if they're a home health aid, they might have temp work. Right. So they will calculate everything for all of the household that you're applying for. So if whatever it shows, like overall for a year, if you're above that rental guidelines that they have, then unfortunately, yeah.

Okay. I asked that because Troy, who we just heard from, was contacted for the Affordable Housing Lottery in Parks slope. He submitted his documents and then he got a raise, right? And that pushed him over the income ceiling and then he got denied. Yeah. That totally sucks. But it's allowed. All right, this is another scenario here. So you walk into a building like Troy did and a dormant tells you that there may be a unit available in this building. What do you do with that information? You literally try to apply that same day. You get the information. You get the information. either from the doorman or you have the address, so you punch it in Google to see how you submit the information and you submit it immediately.

And the reason why is that, you know, I would say maybe seven years ago, five years ago, when people were apartment hunting, there used to be a thing of where it's like, oh, you had a day or two and, you know, you could apply or you could come back or you could think about it. And that doesn't exist today. No, no, units are gone. Same day. Yeah, you have to snag them up. So you have to act on it immediately if you're interested. Okay, so that's allowed folks. Go out there, get to making friends with the concierge or the doorman.

Or, you know, sometimes people look on the side. Sometimes they still have those signs on the side of buildings of like call if you're interested and they have the contact number. Yeah, call immediately. Okay. Another scenario. You apply for a rent stabilized unit on Housing Connect. You get an offer, but then the building management says, whoa, whoa, sorry. this isn't actually a rent-stabilized unit.

What's the deal there? Well, number one, you can look up and see if they're telling the truth or not. So there is a way where you can see if a unit is rent-stabilized or not. Obviously, if you're the existing tenant, if you're not an applicant, and you're unsure if your unit is rent-stabilized, you can actually ask for information from DHCR, and they will mail you the rent registration. There's also a website it's called, am I rent-stabilized? If you punch in that address, they'll be able to tell you. Normally, buildings that were built before 1974, and they have six units or more, there's a high likelihood that it's going to be rent-stabilized. Okay.

I have literally been apartment hunting, and I know that the place is rent-stabilized because I look up, I can see it was when it was built. It's a big building. So I'm like, this place is rent-stabilized. And I will ask, well, like, hey, you know, I'll place. silly. Yeah. I'm not like, I'm a tenant attorney, right? And they'll be like, no, no, actually it's not.

Wow. Like they'll look me in my eye and lie to my face because they don't want people to know that they have a rent-stabilized unit. So the first thing I would say is to go and check to see if that's true. And then the second is what your rights are, you know, your rights are limited if you haven't signed anything. If you sign something and at the time you sign it, they said it's rent-stabilized. And then after you sign it, they say, actually, it's not.

Regardless of if it is or not, you do have some legal recourse into someone inducing you to sign an agreement for a product or essentially the product here's housing where it's vastly different from what they presented it as. Okay, dear listeners, so take notes here. Check out m.m.Rentstabilized.com. Okay, one last scenario, kind of similar to the first. You're applying to an affordable unit on Housing Connect, but your income is just above the requirement. Like under $500 above, do you have any options here? No. Well, let me just say your option here is to stay out of jail.

That's what your option is, because what some people do, and unfortunately they think that they're carving out a deal and advocating for themselves, but it's actually a crime, on both ends, is they work out a side deal. So they say, hey, this apartment, this guideline, you know, this goes for this amount, I make $1,000 more or $500 more. I will pay you extra on the side, but we can use like, you know, whatever this income, so it looks like I'm eligible. And then I'll just pay you extra on the side. So you, landlord, you get to keep the money and then, you know, and I get to have the apartment I want. Yeah, that's called fraud.

Oh. And people get caught up with that quite a bit. And I want people to understand that, let me just be clear, I'm not telling anyone to commit any crime. But what I'm saying is, especially when you're dealing with any apartment that's subsidized, yeah, that gets really, whether it's, especially if it's federally. Now we're getting a federal crime. But a city or state, you don't want to get caught up in anything that could be fraud. Okay, I just wrote down no go. No go, no go.

No go. All right, thanks for playing this little game with me. To all the people, all the listeners right now in the middle of a long apartment hunt like Troy was, any words of encouragement for them? I told Troy, listen, this is a true lesson in persistence. So any encouragement that you have for listeners? I would say use your own resources. Like if you have a friend or you have friends and they live in a building that you would want to live. then ask, do you know anyone who's moving out?

Do you, you know, know anything? Now, sometimes people don't want to live in the building with their friends. Sometimes they do. But don't forget that even in this day and age with everything, with AI, with technology, with social media, that sometimes those personal connections are the ones that went out. Yeah. So, you know, you can, do you know a friend of a friend? Do you know anyone who has an apartment or who's moving out? Because also, if that tenant gets along with the landlord, sometimes a little.

They don't want to go through a whole rigmarrow of trying to find someone. So they're like, oh, well, you've got a built-in recommendation, all right? Yeah. Troy mentioned that his search was five years. Wow. Five years for affordable housing unit. For the affordable one, it can take a very long time. So I was going to ask, is there an average length that people should expect from a search for affordable housing?

You know, it's so funny. I did a workshop with HPD, which are the housing lottery folks. And I had them come in to the Brooklyn Public Library where I asked them all these questions. And I won't lie. It's not great answers, which is that it's a crapshoot. It literally is a lottery. It could take a very short amount of time or a very long amount of time because it's literally a lottery. They literally just pick a number.

As long as out of all the people who apply on time, you get your applications in, they just pick a number. Wow. And then that's it. No strategy. Nothing. just. Yeah. So I, you know, I think some people think, oh, if I call, if I do this, I, according to them, they're like, they just pick a number.

Wow. So, yeah, prayer. You know, prayer doesn't. Prayer and luck. Prayer and luck. Yeah. All right. That's Leah Goodrich.

She's a housing lawyer and former member of the Rent Guidelines Board. Leah, thanks so much for joining us again. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Jene Pierre. Thanks for listening to NYC now.