At the northern end of the 1st Avenue Loop, by building 300, NYU has its own Stuy Town check in for incoming NYU students. About says it all regarding how Stuyvesant Town has become part dormitory. Of course, this fits in with the initial grand scheme to deregulate apartments and increase turn-over for future profits. Now that is something that should have been illegal on its own, regardless of the Roberts decision.
And where there are NYU students, there are going to be pressurized walls....
(All photos take today.)
This post is misleading. That check-in table is for the fewer-than-100 apartments NYU provides to PhD students in their first year of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. These students are definitely NOT the 21-year-old overprivileged and over-partying undergrads everyone seems to complain about; they are focused students from all over the world. Collectively, they get remarkably few noise complaints--I believe NYU's housing staff said it was something like one or two last year, but I can't remember exactly. These are the only students NYU places in Stuytown.
ReplyDeleteI know this because I was one of those first-year PhD students last year. This housing arrangement is indispensable for the majority of students who've never before lived in NYC because it saves us from fighting our way through the unfamiliar and expensive NYC housing market on short notice and from across the country/world. I was upset when I heard of such an anti-student sentiment, especially since I wanted to become part of the community. This sentiment is probably justified toward many of the undergrads and other young partiers living in the area (a fellow PhD student often complained about the loud apartment above him), but we are not your problem.
I liked the area so much I decided to move into a new (non-NYU) Stuytown apartment. Provided the rent doesn't rise too much, I want to stay for the remaining 5 years of my PhD. During this time, I hope to be treated as a member of the community and not "the lowest form of life on the planet," one of "the pot-scrapings," or any of the other things NYU students have been called on stuytownluxliving.com and elsewhere.
Pot-head-Degree...
ReplyDeleteThank you for your input. I have no personal grudge against NYU students, grads or undergrads, and realize that there are a considerable number who follow the rules here and are well-behaved. And, yes, it is difficult, if not impossible, for longtime residents to separate out who is a PhD student and who is a party-type undergrad. But the issue remains of turnover putting apartments out of rent stabilization and into market rate (clouded now by the Roberts decision) and other management schemes to raise rents based on such turnover, irregardless of how well-behaved NYU students can be.
ReplyDeleteAre the braying frats boys and sorority babes who party hearty and puke their way through the property also from NYU or they from some other seat of academia?
ReplyDeleteNot all of the NYU students are brayers and pukers but all of the brayers and pukers are NYU students.
ReplyDeleteI check the ID in the puddle of vomit...
Bottom line is: Stuytown should now be used as a dorm. It was built for families as affordable homes and thee are plenty of families needing affordable homes. There was a waiting list before the Gordon Gekko clone heading MetLife (Benmoishe) changed the policy. Since then it's been sold, abandoned and turned into a dorm/transient hotel/slum. I don't believe that students should be living here and I wish the property would break it's devil's deal with NYU.
ReplyDeletefrom 8:34 AM: Correction! Stuyvesant Town should NOT be used as a dorm. (Didn't get much sleep last night what with Irene outside and the NYU hurricane party going on downstairs from me. Yes, Kids, Noises rises! Especially when we're hooting, whoo hooing and braying and pushing furniture around and stomping in heels on bare floors. I hate this fucking place, but I am not moving!
ReplyDeleteLiving here has ALWAYS been a love-hate relationship. Great place but so many things wrong with it. Most of the "loves" (what's left of them) seem to be about the same just that the "hates" change with time.
ReplyDeleteIt all works out as long as your not a market rate stooge.
Management has a love-hate relationship, too. They love having the place full but they hate you if they can't squeeze every last dime out of you.
For better or worse, I think we're both in the same boat. Some kind of poetic justice but I'm just not sophisticated out to properly articulate it or figure it out completely.
PhD students need to be escorted to their apartments? They can't find their way on their own lol.
ReplyDelete@ August 29, 2011 11:28 PM
ReplyDeleteNot until they complete their dissertations.
Can we get a rent reduction for having to live among students? We did not sign leases to have to live in dorm buildings. What is this nonsense with filling the buildings with these students who don't know how to use the garbage chutes, the recycling area and probably don't know how to wipe their bottoms. When I signed my first lease over 25 years ago. I thought I would be living in a normal apartment complex with families, adults of all ages, children, but NOT students! God! I thought I had been freed from that kind of "neighbor" when I graduated many years ago! This is an absolute outrage. I hate having to listen to their noise and live with their filth. We need to have our rents reduced for reduction of quality of life and gross abuse of the rent laws by management - or whoever the hell runs this dump these days.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 9:29
ReplyDeleteI used to work in property management in NYC and I remember that a luxury building we managed allowed some NYU apartments in the building. However, after a short time the tenants sued not only the management company but the board of directors of the condo board and the NYU arrangement was cancelled. So, there is a precedence of legal action being taken to stop such practices. I remember that some group of tenants was threatening exactly that here but I think they didnt have any $ to proceed. Too bad the PCVSTTA has all but been abandoned.
They belong in DORMS, not apartment complexes created for families and working people. If Management (such a misnomer) doesn't get rid of them soon I suggest we have an organized rent strike. I do NOT want to live with students. That is not the environment I am paying rent and signed a lease for. I resent these dorm apartments being in my building with their subdivided/divided cells and their immature (not even age appropriate) behavior. We should be getting a rent reduction and rollback. My hallway (inhabited, thankfully, by real adult people) hasn't been cleaned in weeks. Are we not paying for these basic services? Why am I paying adult rent to live in a shithole? I see workmen coming and going all day long with pressurized walls, etc. Meantime, they can't even vacuum the halls or elevators or clean the recycling and "laundry" rooms. This is no longer a desirable residential property, but a pimped-out slum.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that NYU contributes in some way (tax break, contract cash ), who knows...
ReplyDeleteSo NYU should contribute to all 11,000 tenants in reduction of OUR rents too. If it's going to be a dorm, and it clearly is, then NYU with its fat pockets should foot the bill!!!!