Kim Velsey

NEW YORK — Fernando Gómez-Baquero moved into his one-bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island one day before the building officially opened in the summer of 2017.

“I convinced them to let me come here early,” said Gómez-Baquero, the director of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute’s Runway Startup postdoc program at Cornell Tech, the technology-based graduate school that opened on Roosevelt Island in 2017. He makes it a habit to try to arrive early in general, whether to new technology or rental housing on the Cornell Tech campus.

Which might explain why he is so pleased to be living in what is being marketed as the world’s first passive-house high-rise, a 26-story tower called The House.

“I geek out on this building,” he said. “I was really fascinated by how you make a building this tall consume 60% to 70% less energy.”

His position at Runway Startup came with an offer of on-campus housing. At the time, he was living with a friend in a Tribeca two-bedroom, but he liked the idea of having a short commute to work (it’s only 49 steps to his office at the Tata Innovation Center). The main draw, however, was the building itself, which generates a steady stream of data for researchers and engineers at Cornell Tech. Several companies in his program have used the data or intend to use it in the development of energy-saving technologies.

During the past 10 years, the passive house, a form of green design that originated in Germany, has surged in popularity. By creating an airtight building envelope with thick, insulated walls and triple-paned windows, passive houses can eliminate the need for heating and cooling systems in temperate climates and greatly minimize it in a place like New York.

But applying those design principles to the construction of a 26-story high-rise is more complicated than it is in a single-family home.

“The design is very clever,” said Gómez-Baquero, who thinks that the designer, Handel Architects, balanced the ratio of windows to walls in the building very well — keeping the windows large and numerous enough to maximize light and views without compromising the building’s functionality (walls make for better insulators). He also admires the heat-recovery ventilation system, which minimizes the energy needed to heat or cool air as it comes into the building. Last year, his highest monthly heating and electricity bill (from midwinter) was about $30, which he pays on top of his $3,100 rent.

Thermostats in units can be adjusted to between 68 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which prevents residents from turning their apartments into saunas or freezers, throwing off the building’s balance and squandering energy.

“To me, that is very comfortable,” Gómez-Baquero said. “I think what a passive house can do is show you that you don’t need temperature extremes.”

A further inducement to energy saving is the digital tally in the lobby that tracks energy consumption by floor, which he sees as a fun way to urge residents to do better.

A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Gómez-Baquero came to the United States to attend a Ph.D. program in nanomaterials at the State University of New York at Albany. While there, he developed the idea for his startup, Besstech, which applied that technology to make longer-lasting, fast-charging lithium-ion batteries.

After selling the company in 2017, he was looking to bring other clean energy ideas to market when he heard about the Runway Startup program, which provides five Ph.D.s a year with support, guidance and about $300,000 each to turn their ideas into market-ready technologies. He thought he might be a good candidate for the program. Instead, he ended up becoming the director.

Gómez-Baquero’s apartment comes with a striking view of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. “There’s something about the bridge that calls to me,” he said. “I am an engineer.”

His living room furniture is limited to a desk, a table and chairs and a few bookshelves.

“I’m a very minimalistic type person,” he said. “I thought about getting a sofa, but why put more things here? I don’t want it to feel cluttered. I like that it feels empty and big.”

He does, however, make an exception for a few things: a telescope, books, an electric piano, an accordion, a zampoña and any musical instruments in disrepair that cross his path.

“Some people rescue animals; I rescue instruments,” he said. “Craigslist is the best place to find them. I got my piano really cheap there because it wasn’t working.”

And although the campus is only one-third complete at the moment — and Roosevelt Island’s dining options are limited to little more than sushi, pizza and a Starbucks — Gómez-Baquero said he couldn’t be happier that he moved in when he did.

“It feels like I’m in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I like being close to things when they get started. I like being in this place where it’s empty, all possibilities.”

$3,100 | Roosevelt Island

Fernando Gómez-Baquero, 41

Occupation: Director of Cornell Tech’s Runway Startup program. He is also a founder of ipHaus, an organization that develops off-the-grid affordable housing.

The world’s first passive-house high-rise: The House, a 26-story residential tower developed by the Hudson Companies and Related Companies, is designed to consume 60-80% less energy than a traditional high-rise, for a projected annual savings of 882 tons of carbon dioxide.

Limited access: Apartments in the building are available only to Cornell faculty and students.

Leaving the island: Gómez-Baquero said he finds it easy to go to meetings on mainland Manhattan, by taking the tram to Midtown or the ferry to Lower Manhattan. The F train also has a stop on Roosevelt Island.

Limited dining options: They don’t bother Gómez-Baquero, who cooks his own breakfast and dinner.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/realestate/living-in-the-first-passive-house-high-rise.html" id="1cd0b4f5-4deb-3f74-a638-852e6f0d8008">The New York Times</a>.

(Renters)

Living in the First Passive-House High-Rise

NEW YORK — In New York, almost every living situation involves a trade-off of some kind. As Joseph Boudin discovered during his first few years in the city, figuring out how to balance the pros and cons of various locations, rents, roommates and apartments is a difficult art to master.

Since moving from Alabama four years ago, Boudin, 25, has lived in five apartments, each a brief attempt to find a long-term home. After a year in Manhattan, he moved to Staten Island to save on rent, although he was working in Midtown East. When he discovered the commute was miserable, he overcorrected by moving into a Hell’s Kitchen room-share where his rent, at $1,875, rivaled that of a studio apartment. And he still had to travel across town to work.

Then he found a $1,200-a-month two-bedroom in an Upper East Side walk-up that turned out to be his worst calculation of all. Going in, he knew the accommodations wouldn’t be deluxe. The apartment was small, shabby and on the sixth floor.

“When my best friend moved me in, she said, ‘Joseph, are you sure you want to live here?'” Boudin recalled. “There was a hole around the bathroom pipe that was the size of a dinner plate.”

What he didn’t know was that his roommate’s brother would go from temporarily sleeping on the living-room futon to permanently living there. Or that his roommate would frequently rent his own room through Airbnb to make money, during which time he would also sleep in the living room.

Making the cramped conditions even more unpleasant, Boudin also had to contend with the brothers’ Labrador retriever. Contrary to the breed’s reputation, it was anything but friendly.

“The dog was huge and vicious — it really didn’t like me,” Boudin said. “I’d come home and the dog would be barking. And I couldn’t ever be in the living room because there was always a dog or a person in there.”

Everyone, including the brothers, agreed that the setup was less than ideal. They were on good enough terms, however, to decide that finding a larger apartment together was the answer. The three were moving forward with plans to rent a three-bedroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when Boudin reconsidered.

“All the red flags were up: First of all, it was too small. Second, we’d still have the dog and the brother with us. The brother also wasn’t employed, so we would have had to pay his fee. And then there was the L train shutting down,” said Boudin, an account executive for a furniture company in Midtown.

Earlier in the search, Boudin and his roommate had found a place through Rezi, a company that leases apartments wholesale from landlords and rents them to tenants at market rate. There is no broker’s fee, and once tenants are approved they can rent any Rezi apartment their income qualifies them for — in Boudin’s case, up to $2,300 a month.

But the roommate hadn’t met Rezi’s qualifications, so they looked elsewhere. Now, browsing the company’s listings, Boudin found several East Harlem studios for under $2,000 a month. If he could afford to live alone in Manhattan, he thought, he wasn’t going to live with roommates in Brooklyn.

In September, he signed a lease for a newly renovated, first-floor apartment on 114th Street, for $1,725 a month.

“I feel like I finally found my home. This place is a palace compared to the last place,” Boudin said, marveling that he had gone from a bathroom with broken tiles and a gaping hole in the floor to one with black marble and a waterfall shower head.

Although his new living situation is more expensive than the previous one, it is still less than he was paying for the Hell’s Kitchen apartment. And his commute, on the Second Avenue bus, takes about 25 minutes.

He also loves living on the first floor. “The building is a walk-up, but I don’t have to walk up, so it’s like living in a luxury building,” he said.

And despite facing the street, he added, the noisiest thing in the apartment is usually the steam pipe.

“One time people were talking outside — it was late — so I opened the curtains and said, ‘Boo! Can you please be quiet? I’m trying to sleep,'” Boudin said. “They said, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and left.”

Even the difficulty of making it to an Equinox gym, where he had a membership, turned out to be a blessing in disguise: He joined a nearby Planet Fitness for $10 a month, a fraction of what he had been paying.

Living alone has also meant being able to his use his Ralph Lauren china and Tiffany crystalware — packed away after several mishaps at the last apartment — on a daily basis.

“I’m definitely happy to be without roommates,” he said. “I’ve had some great ones, but I never want to go back to the burden of roommates again.”

At his new apartment, he added, he is the only one sleeping on the sofa, an Ikea model he reupholstered in Ralph Lauren fabric using a sewing machine and a hot-glue gun.

“I bought a fold-up bed when I moved in, but I never use it,” he said. “The couch is as large as a twin-size bed, and I sleep fine.”

Occupation: Account executive at Walters, a furniture company.

He immediately liked the apartment’s location: “There’s a park, a church and a school nearby — those all seemed like good signs to me. There’s also a Target, Costco, Marshalls and Aldi. And one of the No. 1 restaurants in the city is right down the street from me, Rao’s, although I’ve never been there. I asked how long it takes to get a reservation, and they said two years.”

Still, it’s fun to live near Rao’s: “You’ll walk down the street at 5 or 6 p.m. and see Maseratis, limos coming down the street.”

Except for the smaller-than-average refrigerator, Boudin loves the apartment’s renovation: “All the fixtures are so nice, there’s a washer-dryer, and I think the layout is great.”

Friends in the neighborhood: Boudin convinced a friend from Alabama to take an apartment a short walk away — also a Rezi listing — and now they frequently cook for one another. He has also started volunteering at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue and 90th Street.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/realestate/five-apartments-in-four-years.html" id="9fa64a9a-8f25-31b2-a11c-54363b9b6ac2">The New York Times</a>.

Five Apartments in Four Years

NEW YORK — Roosevelt Island was terra incognita to James and Tanya Starace when they learned eight years ago that they could move into a rent-regulated two-bedroom there.

Tanya Starace had never even set foot on the island before then, and James Starace, who grew up in Staten Island, could only remember going to visit a grandfather in the hospital. But there was no doubt they’d take the apartment because their growing family needed the space and the suburbs were an unappealing alternative.

“I was afraid I would lose my career if we went to the suburbs,” said James Starace, a journeyman actor. “I wouldn’t be able to work as an actor or work at night with little kids in the house in New Jersey. Or if I did, we’d never see each other.”

“And I just love living in the city,” said Tanya Starace. “I always knew I wanted my kids to grow up here.”

For years, the couple had happily shared a series of very small apartments. After they started dating, she moved into his 380-square-foot Greenwich Village one-bedroom, where they frequently hosted dinner parties for up to 30 people. Then, when she was pregnant with their first son, they moved into a 690-square-foot one-bedroom above John’s of 12th Street, the East Village Italian restaurant where they met and where James Starace has worked on and off since 1987.

“I’ve lived in small spaces all my life,” said Tanya Starace, who shared a studio apartment in Elmhurst, Queens with her mother until she was 15, at which point they upgraded to a one-bedroom, dividing the living room to create a bedroom for her.

But by the time the couple’s second son was born, and their bedroom was crowded by a double bed and two cribs, the couple agreed that if one of the affordable housing units they had applied for didn’t come through soon, they would have to leave New York.

Their current 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom is in a Mitchell-Lama building on Roosevelt Island and is almost twice the size of the East Village walk-up they left; and rent was only $25 a month more. The building also has a doorman, elevators and striking views of the Manhattan skyline and the East River. If Tanya Starace at first sometimes pined for the island of Manhattan, she admitted that Roosevelt, quiet and residential, “was a soft landing from the East Village when you have kids.” Their daughter, Eliana, was born in 2013.

Like many buildings in the Mitchell-Lama program, the Staraces learned shortly after they moved in that theirs was reaching the end of its affordability agreement with the city, and negotiations to convert the building to a co-op had been underway for some time. If residents voted to go co-op, the Staraces and other tenants would be able to stay in their apartments as rent-stabilized tenants, but they would not be able to move to a different apartment; some units would also go market rate.

The Staraces felt that the conversion presented a tremendous opportunity. The “insider” price for their apartment, set at 35 percent of market rate, was $243,000 — a deal they knew they’d never see again. And if they bought, they’d be able to make improvements — like adding a shower to the half-bathroom — that would help better accommodate a family of five.

But they decided that they’d only buy if they could work out a monthly payment that was similar to their rent. They didn’t know if they could afford the down payment to make that possible — or find a bank to give them a mortgage in the allotted time period.

“It was cheap, but it’s still New York real estate,” James Starace said of the purchase price.

When the math worked out, they were delighted. While their rent had been $1,875 a month, their monthly mortgage and maintenance fees add up to about $2,000 a month.

“We just walked into an opportunity that was long in the making by other people,” said James Starace. “We just went with the momentum. We knew we were in a sweet spot.”

Since purchasing the apartment in 2015, they’ve made a number of changes: putting up molding, renovating the kitchen — James Starace loves to cook — and making the hall closets more functional.

They also took out a closet in the second bedroom so they could fit in three lofted twin-size beds with built-in closets, which Tanya Starace found at Ikea after exploring much costlier custom options. The lofted bed setup, in which each child has their own space underneath, has solved the most common dispute between their children, now 5, 9 and 11, she said: fights over someone messing with someone else’s stuff.

And if a two-bedroom apartment may strike some as still rather cramped for a family of five, the Staraces say the layout of their current apartment is more conducive to raising a family than any place they lived before — it feels like a home.

“Only on Sunday mornings do I think it would be great if we had a big house,” said James Starace. “But we do rent big houses sometimes when we go on vacation and they all end up sleeping in the same room anyway.”

“And I like to know where everyone is,” Tanya Starace said. “It keeps us close.”

James Starace, 49, and Tanya Starace, 40

Occupation: James Starace is an actor and a waiter at John’s of 12th Street in the East Village. Tanya Starace is a senior manager at a global packaging company in Midtown.

Their children: James, 11, Luca, 9, and Eliana, 5

James Starace first applied for affordable housing in 2004: “We knew we were going to get married and I knew I wanted to stay an actor.”

Restricted sale: Per their purchase agreement, the Staraces are limited in how much they can resell their apartment for, and buyers must also meet certain income limits.

Acting jobs: Last year, James Starace had a small role in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film “The Irishman.” “My role was nothing glamorous, but it was like a dream come true — to be on set with three legends I’ve always wanted to work with,” he said, referring to Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/realestate/roosevelt-island-for-the-win.html" id="92d8e74d-bd65-3b91-a988-536c09880d6d">The New York Times</a>.

Roosevelt Island for the Win

The charms of Bushwick, Brooklyn, had already started to wear thin for Ryan Cheal when the L train shutdown was announced in 2016. So he started looking for a new place last summer, about six months before repairs were scheduled to begin.

His girlfriend, Kelly Godzik, lived a few blocks away and was also dreading the looming shutdown, but had no plans to move, as her lease wasn’t up soon and she really liked her roommate.

But subway and real estate realities often can lead couples down unanticipated paths. Godzik was browsing listings on Cheal’s behalf when she came across a one-bedroom in a new building by the Broadway Triangle — an area where Bushwick, Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant meet — a short walk from the J, M and G trains. And she decided to accompany him when he went to see it.

“Our jaws were dropping when they showed us this place,” said Cheal, whose previous apartment had been a rough-around-the-edges three-bedroom share that rented for $3,000 a month.

Godzik felt her resolve to stay at her current place — also shabby and soon to be in the boondocks of Brooklyn — melt away.

“Coming in, everything was so shiny; no one has lived here before. All the places we’d lived before were pretty beat up, walls not repainted between tenants,” Godzik said. “We were like, ‘Get us out of the Bushwick dingy hole.’”

Moving in together was a big step, but after seeing the building’s rooftop, which would be outfitted with a number of barbecues come spring, the couple conferred for only a few minutes before deciding that they wanted the apartment. But only if there wasn’t a broker’s fee.

“I feel like if you’ve lived in New York long enough you can figure out how to find a nice place that doesn’t charge a fee,” Godzik said.

“If there had been a broker’s fee here, we probably would have passed, on principle,” said Cheal, who works as a property manager for a residential real estate company in Manhattan, and had recently walked away from a well-priced apartment in Williamsburg after the broker told him the fee was a whopping 20 percent.

Not only was this apartment no-fee, but when they sat down to talk about how much money they would need to provide upfront, the broker said the building was partnering with a new company, Obligo, that covered the cost of the security deposit for financially qualified tenants in exchange for a small monthly fee for the duration of the lease, in their case $15. (Through the company, they also authorized the landlord to charge up to the full deposit if there was damage to the apartment.) All they needed to put down was the first month’s rent of $3,000.

“We used the money we would have paid for a security deposit to furnish the apartment,” said Cheal, who was more than happy to leave behind his apartment and also his broken-down Ikea furniture — “college-kid-like junk” — on the curb in Bushwick.

The couple had lived in their apartment for about four months when it was announced in January that the L train wouldn’t be shutting down after all.

“When we found out, we were like, ‘What? We’ve been lied to,’” Cheal said.

“One of my friends on the L train had been able to negotiate her rent down $300 a month,” Godzik said.

Once they recovered from their surprise, however, they agreed that although the shutdown had been a major factor in their decision, they were happy they made the move. Their new neighborhood, populated by many Orthodox Jewish families, is much quieter than the previous one, where drunken arguments often spilled out from the bars into the streets.

And after years of living in scuffed-up shares, they love having an apartment where the only issue has been the pilot light in the oven going out.

“We both made a big step up, apartment-wise,” Cheal said.

“And we both like living together,” Godzik added.

The only problem is the transit situation. Before they moved in, Godzik thought she could take the J train to Fulton Street — a smooth commute to her job at the World Trade Center, where she works in marketing for Condé Nast. But the nearby Lorimer J train stop is local, and the J train doesn’t always run local.

“So depending on whether it’s running local or not, getting to work every morning is kind of a crapshoot,” she said.

$3,000 | South Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Kelly Godzik, 27, and Ryan Cheal, 32

Occupations: Godzik is a freelance marketing operations and project manager at Condé Nast; Cheal is a property manager for a family-owned residential real estate company.

Apartment aesthetics: The big windows, high ceilings and light gray cabinets caught the couple’s attention when they first toured the apartment. “We really like the California aesthetic. The first trip we took together as a couple was to Malibu,” Godzik said. “We’re obsessed with light, airy, macramé.”

Keeping the apartment light and airy: “We didn’t want it to be too crowded. Living with roommates, we realized how easily things could get cluttered,” Godzik said. “We were like, ‘Let’s only bring in things that have a purpose.’”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/realestate/moving-for-the-l-train.html" id="1ea1d99d-9f8e-3766-a6de-d6232c8c2050">The New York Times</a>.

Moving for the L Train

NEW YORK — In 2014, Ian Jarvis — along with many of his neighbors at 360 Central Park West — received some unwelcome news. He got a letter from the landlord, Argo Real Estate, informing him that Argo would not be renewing his lease. The building, an elegant prewar rental on the park, was going condo, and he would have to leave.

Jarvis knew that he’d never find anything remotely like his apartment, a generously proportioned one-bedroom on the 16th floor of the building with a sweeping view of Central Park. At least, he’d never find it for less than $3,000 a month.

He’d moved into the apartment in 2006, after living on the Upper East Side, in a perfectly nice apartment between Park and Madison. But he wasn’t in love with the East Side — he’d moved there a few years earlier, after the Los Angeles-based cosmetics company where he’d been a partner was sold, freeing him up to move back to New York — so he reached out to a broker.

“I said, ‘I want to move, but I’m not going down and I’m not going to the side. I’m only going up. Let me know what you can find,’” he recalled.

The broker’s first few options didn’t appeal, but one day he called to say that he’d found something on Central Park West and Jarvis needed to come right away.

“I felt like I’d hit the rental lottery,” said Jarvis, who despite the previous tenant’s waist-high stacks of newspapers going back to the Nixon era, saw the apartment for the rare gem it was. Rent was $2,600 a month.

“I thought it was an extremely good deal,” he said. “I was close to the tennis courts, the crosstown bus. There is a great staff and it’s dog friendly.”

The last item was important because his wife, Lisa Jarvis, who spends the majority of her time upstate in Copake, New York, has a dog. Lisa Jarvis runs a company based there that designs and manufactures decorative hardware for furniture and cabinetry, and the couple visit each other on weekends.

Lisa Jarvis helped him decorate the apartment, which when cleared of newspapers and covered in a fresh coat of paint, proved as charming as he’d hoped. There is a proper foyer with a coat closet, which opens out onto a large living and dining area. Here, Ian Jarvis keeps a piano — he’s been taking lessons and writing songs “in the style of Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass” — a tiny galley kitchen “that belongs on a boat” as he put it, and a good-sized bedroom with stunning views of the park.

“I really wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “This apartment is delightful to me.”

After receiving the nonrenewal notice in 2014, however, it looked like change was imminent, but he didn’t have much time to dwell on the bad news. Within a few days, the building’s tenant association discovered that Jarvis’ apartment, in addition to a number of others, could be protected under rent stabilization laws through the J-51 program (there are also other rent-stabilized tenants in the building).

Argo declined to comment, but according to a lawyer who represented the tenants’ association, leases signed during the period when the landlord received J-51 benefits were ruled to be rent-stabilized. J-51, a housing program that grants tax breaks to landlords of rental apartments who make certain repairs, prohibits landlords from deregulating apartments while receiving the tax benefits.

Since then, Jarvis said, some other tenants have taken buyouts, but he has no intention of leaving and has turned down several buyout offers. (He would not disclose what he had been offered and he said he did not know how much other tenants had received.)

“I overlook Central Park. If I move I will never again have this luxury,” Jarvis said. “I said come to me when you have a number that’s magical because I’d be happy here forever.”

“I like renting, I think the price is right,” he continued; he now pays $2,913 a month. “And I have concerns about the condo market. I think you’re in it for 10 to 20 years if you buy.”

Of course, living through a condo conversion has not always been a pleasant experience. For a number of months, he didn’t have cooking gas, during which time he had to prepare meals on a hot plate. One of the building’s main elevators was also shut down for a while, resulting in long wait times. Dirt and dust were often prevalent; he also said he saw an uptick of mice and roaches.

“Which was troubling to a lot of people, but it’s to be expected,” he said, adding that all the issues have since been resolved. “We knew going in that they were doing a conversion. It’s not going to be the Immaculate Conception.”

And he also got an unexpected conversion boon — as part of the architectural refurbishment, a second park-facing window has been installed in his bedroom. “The dust and dirt was unbelievable,” he said. “But in the end I had two windows.”

The only thing that he really minds, he said, has been the departure of a number of the building’s longtime residents, although the tenants on his floor have all opted to stay.

“It’s been a friendly place since the day I moved in,” he said. “The building had characters. And it still has some characters. The people moving in, I like them all, too, but I do have a judgment on everyone who moves in: They’re rich. The lowest apartments are going for like $1.5 million.”

$2,913 | Upper West Side

Ian Jarvis, 63

Occupation: Business consultant specializing in leadership and succession issues. Jarvis is also writing a book called “Live With Your Lights On,” which is about “how to attack and change your habits. People get to a certain age and stop doing new things, trying new things.”

On the neighbors on his floor: “They’re a really interesting group,” he said. “We help each other out. On a less intimate level, it’s like ‘Friends.’ ”

Five years ago: It seemed that Jarvis would have to move out, but the tenant association discovered that his apartment was likely protected by rent stabilization laws. “I didn’t spend much time on the fear factor,” he said. “J-51 didn’t seem that complicated to me.”

This article originally appeared in

A Rent-Stabilized Apartment on Central Park? Of Course He's Staying

“It was secure; you knew you wouldn’t have to leave,” Walter said. But affordable rent wasn’t the only, or even the primary, draw. Moving into Westbeth — which opened in 1970, after a young Richard Meier oversaw the conversion of the former Bell Laboratories into 383 live-work spaces — also meant joining an artistic community.

“It’s a legendary place, living among all these artists. I liked the idea of that,” said Walter, 69, who was ecstatic when she finally made it to the top of the list after a decade. “I remember calling up all my friends and my parents, screaming.”

Not even the size of the apartment she would be moving into — a 390-square-foot studio — dimmed her enthusiasm.

She had been sharing a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village with her long-term girlfriend, and initially the plan was for them to move into Westbeth together. But when they discovered that their combined income would push them over the limit for a one-bedroom apartment, it was decided that Walter should take a studio by herself.

“We weren’t getting along anyway at the time, and it seemed like some space might help,” she said. “It was really a blessing, as we broke up a few years later.”

And if her studio was, in some ways, Spartan — she slept on a pullout sofa because there wasn’t enough floor space to have a bed and do yoga at home — the building offered an elevator and a laundry room, which felt like luxuries after decades of living in walk-ups. Most important, she had the freedom to focus on the work she wanted to be doing.

“It really enabled me to write creative nonfiction,” said Walter, who wrote her memoir, “Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing,” while living at Westbeth. “If I had a higher rent, I would have had to do more of other things.”

Of course, she added, “living here has its ups and downs — people know your business and that kind of thing.”

It also took her 14 years on the internal wait list to move into a one-bedroom apartment, a 600-square-foot space for which she pays $1,021 a month.

“My friends like to joke that it only took me 24 years to get a one-bedroom in Westbeth,” said Walter, who consulted several people in the building to help decide whether she should take the apartment or hold out for a potentially better space in the future.

After a weekend of consideration, she told the management office she would take it, and she felt certain she had made the right choice when they told her they had been inundated with calls and inquiries from other wait-listed residents.

“This is considered a small one-bedroom,” she said, “but I like it because the light is so good.”

Art from other Westbeth residents decorates her walls: a Bill Anthony sketch, an abstract painting by Hedy O’Beil and a Ralph Dubin piece she bought at the Westbeth Flea Market after his widow died.

The most striking works, however, are two very large abstract paintings in blues and greens done by Hilda Wisoky, a long-term resident who went into a nursing home. As her family didn’t want the work she left behind, the building management offered it to other residents for free.

When Walter moved into her space, she thought she might put up a wall to divide her 600 square feet into a more traditional living room/bedroom setup. (Westbeth’s apartments come as raw space that tenants are left to design and divvy up to suit their creative needs.) But she quickly decided that she preferred to keep it open. She likes her expanse of big windows and the sliver view of the Empire State Building that she can see from her bed, a particularly nice vista at night.

Her dominant view, however, is to the north, overlooking what was the Superior Ink factory when she moved into the building and is now Superior Ink, a luxury condo development, where the designer Marc Jacobs paid more than $10 million for a townhouse shortly after it opened.

When she left the East Village, Walter said, “I was in my late 40s, and this seemed like a better fit; the East Village has always been very young.”

She continued: “Now I sometimes feel like an impostor who slipped into this neighborhood. But Westbeth is like an oasis.”

West Village, Manhattan| $1,021/mo.

Kate Walter, 69

Occupation: Writer of creative nonfiction and recently retired staff instructor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

What is Westbeth: The first and largest federally subsidized artists’ colony, opened in 1970 in a cluster of converted Bell Laboratories buildings. The wait list has been closed for years. To get in, Walter had to prove she was an artist by showing her work, and she had to be recommended by other artists in her field.

An aging community: Although Westbeth is a NORC, or naturally occurring retirement community, in recent years Walter said she has noticed more children in the halls.

Creative pursuits: Walter is part of an acting group and a singing group called the Bliss Singers. Both workshops are held at Westbeth and taught by Westbeth residents, but they are open to others who live in the neighborhood.

On how other residents live: “It’s really interesting to see what other people in your same line do with their space,” Walter said. “Some built rooms; one woman built lofts; another couple built all these cabinets. Another guy had his bed and his desk against one wall, and the other 80 percent of the space was his painting studio. Everyone’s apartment looks different.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/realestate/finding-her-place-at-westbeth.html" id="45408226-a4fe-37ed-a0b1-4ebf309a29ad">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — After Kate Walter, a memoirist and essayist, was accepted onto Westbeth’s wait list in 1987, she tried to put it out of her mind. “You can’t think about it too much,” Walter said, explaining that, even back then, when Manhattan still had a relative abundance of inexpensive apartments where artists could live and work, spots at Westbeth, a well-known artists’ housing complex in the West Village, were highly coveted.

Finding Her Place at Westbeth

<h1>(Renters): In New York, where apartments tend to be small and good ones hard to come by, real estate often plays an outsize role in romance, speeding along some relationships and straining others as couples juggle the stages of courtship with lease terms and the lure of cheaper rent.</h1>

At least, it did for Helga Traxler and Joachim Hackl, who now live in their third apartment together — a spacious and meticulously designed one-bedroom. It’s the first place they’ve shared that wasn’t something of a relationship test.

The couple met as roommates in a Williamsburg share in 2014, after a mutual friend unintentionally played Cupid by offering Hackl his recently vacated room in the four-bedroom apartment where Traxler lived.

“When our common friend told me, ‘You’re going to have a new roommate. I was like, ‘Ugh! Another new roommate?’” said Traxler. “In the three years I lived there, I had so many new roommates I lost count.”

But within a few months, Traxler, a freelance photographer, and Hackl, who was doing a fellowship at a small architecture firm at the time, had started dating.

“All the other roommates were away for Thanksgiving,” said Traxler who, like Hackl, is Austrian. “We took the chance.”

A relatively short time later, they once again found themselves facing a relationship decision when Hackl was accepted to a master’s program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University, which came with a tempting offer of student housing. The apartment was a tiny one-bedroom on 112th Street in Morningside Heights for $1,500 a month.

After talking, they agreed that, rather than make theirs a cross-borough affair, they’d move into the apartment together. Since they were both in the country on visas, they didn’t know whether they’d get another chance to live in Manhattan.

“If this happened back in Austria, it’s not something we probably would have done,” Traxler said. “But I think it’s a typical New York thing. It made sense versus having two New York apartments and having to travel to see each other.”

And, having lived together as roommates for about a year before moving to Manhattan, there weren’t many surprises. “You’ve already seen how the other person acts in their natural habitat,” said Hackl.

Still, the apartment was only about 360 square feet, with a big bedroom and hardly any living space, which presented an issue as they were both, essentially, working from home during that period.

“Looking back, I’m very surprised it worked out so well,” said Traxler, who credited differing schedules and having a gym nearby to get their aggression out with keeping them sane.

When Hackl finished his two-year program, they had to give up the apartment. Traxler had grown to love the convenience of the neighborhood — a one-minute walk to the subway, a 20-minute train ride to Midtown, and a 24-hour grocery store nearby. But with a budget of $2,000 a month, they knew they couldn’t afford to stay in the area.

As they started looking in Brooklyn, they realized how difficult it was to get a lease in New York as foreigners with limited credit history. A promising lead — their friends, who were leaving a two-bedroom, recommended the couple to their landlord — evaporated after the landlord decided to turn the listing over to a broker rather than take them.

They were at a friend’s birthday party, talking about losing the apartment, when a couple who owned a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant overheard them. The tenants in their garden apartment were leaving and the space was available.

“It was a great coincidence,” said Hackl. The apartment was $1,887 a month and much nicer than anything else they’d seen. The landlords, a German artist with an architectural background and her husband, whom they knew a little socially before moving in, had renovated it to a very high standard, including installing triple-paned windows that, when closed, eliminate all outside noise. (The brownstone is renovated to passive house standards, which also means it stays cool in the summer.) Their apartment also has access to a huge shared backyard — their landlords and the owners of three adjacent houses agreed to take down the fences between their spaces.

They moved in two years ago, installing twin desks in the living room, though Traxler works all over the apartment and Hackl now has a full-time job as an exhibition designer at the Brooklyn Museum.

“You work everywhere you can put your laptop,” he said to her. “I nap everywhere I can put my butt.”

Traxler noted that it was nice to have enough space that they can both hang out or work in the apartment without having to be in the same room. “And if we need some time for ourselves, there’s a door that can be closed.”

Since moving in, they’ve filled the space with art from friends, plants, a sofa (their last place was too small for one), and many books — which, for a couple who has to reapply for visas every few years, is the riskiest element of their living situation.

“When we met, we were both like, ‘If you see a good book, you buy it,’” said Hackl. “So we have a lot of books. Friends come over and ask, ‘Are these all your books?’”

“But that’s what makes it home,” said Traxler. “You want to be comfortable. You don’t want to think, ‘What if I ever move?’”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/realestate/when-a-great-apartment-plays-cupid.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

At least, it did for Helga Traxler and Joachim Hackl, who now live in their third apartment together — a spacious and meticulously designed one-bedroom. It’s the first place they’ve shared that wasn’t something of a relationship test.

When a great apartment plays Cupid

“When my nieces and nephews came over, it was always like a party,” Santiago said. “I loved it.”

She remembers playing in the snow in the empty lot behind her apartment building, attending P.S. 12 and going to church with her parents, who were members of the Primitive Christian Church on East Broadway. Her father, a minister and army veteran, spoke English fluently and wanted his children to, as well.

Eight years later, at the urging of her parents, Santiago moved back to Puerto Rico. But she retained a fondness for the city and her old neighborhood. And later in life, after her husband died in 2010, she longed to return to the Lower East Side.

“After he passed on, I always had this yearning to come back,” Santiago said. “In Puerto Rico, I was very involved with the community and politics. I needed a fresh start. This is where I had good memories. I had good memories there, too, but it was very connected to my husband.”

She met her husband, Juan Hernandez Ferrer, who grew up in Brooklyn, shortly after moving back to Puerto Rico, where she worked as a bilingual secretary to the mayor of Toa Baja, a municipality in the north. Hernandez Ferrer happened to be the mayor. He later became a senator in District 2, and they had two sons, who are now 32 and 33 and live in New York.

On a rental budget of less than $1,000 a month, she could hardly afford to live in New York, let alone in a highly sought-after area like the Lower East Side. Santiago, who is retired, spent most of her life doing counseling, as well as community-, arts- and church-related work, much of it unpaid, and now lives on Social Security income.

But memories weren’t the only thing drawing her to the Lower East Side. She also wanted to be close to family members who lived there, including an 85-year-old sister with Alzheimer’s. “I said, ‘I want to be in my old neighborhood,’ and I didn’t want to live in an old apartment — I was worried, I see a lot of fires,” Santiago said. “My son says, ‘Mom, you’re asking too much. You’re never going to get that.’”

(Renters): NEW YORK — In 1966, when she was 11, Ruth Santiago moved from Puerto Rico to an apartment on Pitt Street, on the Lower East Side, with her parents and five brothers. The youngest of 17 children, Santiago had many older siblings already living in New York by then, which made the move feel like an adventure and a homecoming.

Kim Velsey

Articles written by the author

Living in the First Passive-House High-Rise

Five Apartments in Four Years

Roosevelt Island for the Win

Moving for the L Train

A Rent-Stabilized Apartment on Central Park? Of Course He's Staying

Finding Her Place at Westbeth

When a great apartment plays Cupid

Coming home to the Lower East Side

A nice one-bedroom, even on a teacher's salary

A quiet retirement? No thanks, they'll take Herald Square

A cold loft in an industrial part of Bedford-Stuyvesant? Sure

Another month, another neighborhood

A pied-à-terre becomes home

An age-appropriate place downtown

Can I fit a bed and a dresser in here?