He Pays WHAT!?!?!

One of my former writers -- a Manhattan native whose father once owned a Times Square restaurant called Hamburger Harry's -- returned to New York City to attend grad school after leaving Harrisonburg. While doing so, he applied for a housing lottery. The lottery was open only to people who met certain criteria, low income among them. He won.

The reward was a loft in the Financial District for, at the time, less than $300 a month. He also had to put down a $16,000 deposit, refundable if he moves out. Sixteen-grand sounds like a lot until you consider that he, essentially, made it back in a year because of the absurdly low rent. Since moving into the loft two or three years ago, he's gotten at job with a Time-Warner magazine and is making more money, so his rent is now just below $500 a month -- still a steal in Manhattan. How much of a steal? Check this out (from the New York Times):

The rents for one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan average $2,567 a month, and two-bedrooms average $3,854 a month, according to data from Citi Habitats, a large rental brokerage company, but rents tend to be far higher in coveted neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and TriBeCa.

Because landlords typically require renters to earn 40 times their monthly rent in annual income, renters of those average apartments would need to earn at least $102,680, individually or combined, to qualify for a one-bedroom and $154,160 to afford a two-bedroom.

I have no moral qualms with any of this. Manhattan is an island. Space is precious. Prices reflect that. Ideally, of course, people of all incomes could afford to live there -- ideally because diversity gives places character. Fortunately, there are enough dumps in the East Village and Lower East Side to keep the place honest for a while longer.