This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Renting an apartment in any city can be a stressful and daunting situation, but nowhere more so than New York. My guest today is the creator of a platform that makes the process of finding both quality apartments and landlords easier. Alia Mohammed created open Igloo after navigating her own frustrations with the rental market. Born in Canada, Mohammed spent nearly a decade working in international finance,
venture capital, and consulting. She would eventually leave finance for the startup world and chose a cause close to home. With open Igloo, Mohammed hopes to bring transparency to rental markets by combining open source city data with feedback and reviews directly from tennant. As of this year, twenty twenty six, open igloo has supported more than three million New York City renters. I wanted to know how open igloo gained such a large following since its launch in twenty twenty.
They find us on social media, they hear about us through friends and family, and sometimes on podcasts and then radio shows.
Okay, but when they come to you they is it a fee they pay? Now? I was told that there's was there a fee from the beginning, and now there and there wasn't and now there is whove grounds much you need to charge them my fee?
Yeah, So we support renters all across the five boroughs in researching buildings and landlords. They're considering and searching for quality apartments. So we don't charge renters when they search for an apartment on our platform. The way that we monetize is we build partnerships with quality and reputable owners, and when we send them, renters to their door and at least get signed. That's how we get compensated.
Owners of the buildings. Exactly, and how did the owners of the buildings react at first when you went to them and tell them what it was you had up your slave. It's a great question.
So at the beginning, they were definitely cautious about what we were building. So we built a platform that allows renters to read and share reviews about their rental experiences. We coupled that with city data, so we give renters access to are there any open violations in this building? Any litigation history, any eviction history? So landlords were you know,
a little bit cautious. But what we've done is we built a community of landlords that are really supportive of this transparency because landlords who take their businesses seriously understand that renters knowing the good, bad and ugly before they sign a one good face is really really important. I mean, I'll give you a small example. There was an apartment above a bodega that turns into a nightclub every single
night until four in the morning. Why would a landlord want a tenant to move in not having access to that information, right, that's not going to be a good a good starting point for the relationship. So that's really what we're after is bringing these two sides together and giving them access to information.
Now, when you have the owners of the buildings, and there was the ones that didn't want to participate in your program, they don't want to cooperate it in any way. That led me to think, among other things, of what's the number one complaint that renters have in New York about the buildings they are And I'm going to assume it's heat.
Heat is a huge one, especially in the weather that we're having in New York City right now, record weather exactly seventy percent of buildings in New York City rely on the landlord to turn on the heat. We also have really old housing stock in New York City, so we're using steamed radiators that haven't been maintained in you know, in decades. So this is a real challenge that even if the heat is working in the building, your apartment might feel like asauna. Right, it's one hundred degrees in
your apartment. So definitely heat is a number one complaint amongst runters.
Now, when I would assume that New Yorkers, or the political consciousness of New York as it's expressed during elections and what the candidates say, they care deeply about housing and the lack thereof, would you say that that's true. New Yorkers want us to do something about the house situation, and not just the ones you need it affordable house Exactly.
There are five and a half million renters in New York City, sixty five percent of the city rents their home, and there just simply isn't enough housing. And then you also look at the affordability of the housing that does exist. Thirty percent of New York City renter, the majority of New York City renters spend more than thirty percent of their income on rent. Another thirty percent of New York City renter is spend over fifty percent of their income
on rent. So this is considered a very severely rent burdened city, and it needs to be a holistic solution that includes building housing, but also smart policy that's going to keep renters housed in the long run.
Are you heartened by mom Donnie becoming the mayor?
You know, I'm excited that he really focused on housing affordability as a pillar of his campaign, and he really spoke to the hearts of New Yorkers, which is this is something we're struggling with every single month when we write that rent check. And I'm excited that he seems to be really focused on solving this problem.
I remember when I was young, I would come into New York and we would get the Village Voice there was no internet, and look for ass in the real estate market. Go to the apartment, stand in line. The line's a block long. I'm ever forget. I'm on Bleaker Street. I walk into the studio and all the walls are peeling off, the plasters pill you see the last inside you can see the laugh inside the wood framing, inside
the walls. Everything, the paint is peeling. The thing is a mess, and there's like a box, a wooden box resemble the steam trunk. But then you look closer, there was drawers there. They just had the frame unpainted and you put a mattress on top, I guess, or some piece of pham. And I walk up to the guy and they wanted like back then, they wanted some you know, I don't remember. It was like, let's say it's fifteen hundred dollars for something that should have cost half that.
I look at the guy. Because of the neighborhood, obviously there's a line of people, and I say to the guy, you gotta be kidding me. I looked him right in the face. You're charging fifteen hundred dollars to this. He goes. You come back at four o'clock, it'll be gone. And that was the reality of it. I learned right away your apartment. How did you find your apartment?
I found my apartment by standing outside of the building waiting for people walking in and out, asking them if they liked the building. So my New York City rental story not as exciting as yours. But I lived in apartments that were not well maintained, landlords that never picked up the phone when something went wrong. So whenever I would apartment hunt, I wanted to do more research. I would just stand outside of buildings. I would wait for people walking in and out, saying do you live here?
How's the landlord? Should I move in? And I got a lot of really valuable information from doing that, and that's ultimately how I found my apartment. I got good
reviews from the people that were walking out. And this was really the light bulb moment to start opening glow, which is, can we build a platform to crowdsource this rental feedback, couple it with city data, and give renters their own background check on a building and landlord in the same way that renters have to put together one hundred page application to get an apartment in New York City. So that's how I found my apartment. It's rent stabilized,
it's in Brooklyn. I've lived there for many years and don't have plans to leave anytime soon.
Where are they doing it better? What city are they doing it better? Because you hear about housing crises all over, particularly San Francisco, because of the tech world pricing all that housing. Where's the city that you think is getting it more right than wrong?
Oh my goodness, it's a great it's a great question. And I think that New York is not unique in being a city that struggles with their housing. You look at San Francisco, you look at La you even look at Miami that had a lot of influx of new new renters during COVID. This is a global issue with
metropolitan cities. Even if you look at case studies in Europe, which you know in Vienna or Berlin or even Paris, cities that have really strong rent regulation, they're also struggling to keep up with the population growth and grow the housing stock. So I think this is something that's really universal. It's the medium and smaller cities that are that are doing better, like a Boston or a DC.
How's Toronto.
Toronto also is having a lot of challenges. A lot of their housing stock is new, brand new condos, luxury condos where rents are just too expensive and your average working class family can't even afford to move into the new housing that's being constructed. So this is this is definitely a global issue across the gambit.
I see those huge buildings on the south end of the park. I see those enormous pencil like buildings they put up in recent ears to the ugliest buildings I've ever seen in New York.
And they have their own construction issues. There was the story of the match Tick building on Park Avenue where the garbage shoot, the garbage velocity, yes, exactly, it was just exploding. And you know, people spend tens of millions of dollars on those apartments.
So one thing that comes to mind is I hear, maybe just in my head, the wording of people who are opposed to the work you do. They're totally market driven, and they're going to sit there and say, why does New York owe everybody a place to live here? Like once we reach where we are and there's a I mean, I'm all for rend control, stabilization, but the idea that we owe everybody a house, why don't they just go
somewhere else. There's no room, it's done, it's filled up for now, and unless they build other things, what do you say to them?
You know, I have a very firm belief that there are some things that are human rights, and housing is one of them, and housing is something that permeates into all aspects of our society. If people do not have stable housing, they're not going to have access to education, They're not going to have access to economic opportunity. Housing is really the foundation to living in a successful society.
And you'll talk to some of these free market capitalists that also share that belief that you should not be able to charge whatever you want on housing, education, or healthcare. These are things that are extremely sacred that need to have some sort of regulation. New York City has always been a place where people want to live, that people move from all over the world, and we need to make sure that we are accommodating the spirit and culture and the history of New York City.
You function, I'm sure the fees that are paid to you by your clients, if you will, that doesn't cover all the costs, correct, correct? So you get funding from where we do. We're a venture back to startup, right, and where does the money come from?
So we have monetization models, but we also have venture capital investors that also believe in this mission of rental transparency that has provided funding to us.
You did a lot of things in your career, Yes, before you did this, and I'm assuming you did fairly well. You win all these money. My friends who do finance or whatever it is, as a matter of treasure anything, I just called them. They're in money. I said, yes, just make my life simpler because I can't keep track of all these different offshoots. But you did that. Do you miss it or do you still do it? Are you still an entrepreneur in the way that you were before opening clip?
I am an entrepreneur full time with Open a Glue, and I do miss my prior stints. I worked in banking, I worked in venture capital, investing in startups, working on a trading floor. My first job out of college was working in Wall Street. That's what brought me to New York City to begin with. And there's something fun about the pace and also just the learning. Right When you work in that type of environment, you're reading the news. You're reading about what's going on in all corners of
all corners of the world. And I loved that about the job. But I do that now in my work with Openeglo. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is going on in the housing space, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. What we're seeing now, just a few years into building Open Agloo,
is that landlords are changing their behavior. They're actually taking care of their buildings because they're realizing that the transparency that we're putting in, the spotlight we're putting on them means they're losing clients. They're not signing leases as fast as they once were because renters are looking at the reviews and saying, well, I don't want to pay four thousand dollars a month to live here. You don't take
care of your renters that you have right now. So we're starting to see that impact, and that's really what I'm excited to continue to focus on.
Not in all things, but I tend to view when I was reading about you and your work, I tend to view it like other things, where you're doing jobs the government ought to be doing. You're providing a service, and you're providing a reality to people that is a business the government might have been in to provide transparency, and so.
Farth transparency and also informing renters about their rights. So rent stabilization is a big policy that impacts millions of New Yorkers. There's nearly a million rent stabilized apartments, and we ask renters when they're reviewing their landlords and buildings, do you live in a stabilized apartment?
Yes? No?
Not sure? Thirty five percent of our users check not sure, and that breaks my heart. That means that there are hundreds of thousands of renters who probably live in a stabilized apartment and don't even know it. And having this type of protection means your rent increases are limited and you are entitled to a renewal. The landlord cannot ask you to leave. So big mission at O BINEGLO has been sharing this information, trying to trying to get the
work done. Believe absolutely, it's devastating when you when you think about the old school New Yorkers and we all know one or two of them that are living in a five hundred dollars rent controlled apartment on the Upper West Side. Those are because those renters knew their rights right and they stayed in that apartment for their entire lives, and as a result, they're able to stay and live in the city comfortably, and I want to make sure as many renters know about those rights as possible.
Open igloo co founder and CEO Alia Mohammad. If you enjoy conversations about the heart of New York City, check out my episode with WNYC's Brian Larra.
People have said to me, oh, your show is the opposite of Rush Limbaugh. And it's not because he's conservative and I'm liberal. It's because he makes no secret about the shows about what he thinks. For me, I have opinions. I sometimes state my opinions, or I sometimes frame questions in a leading way that suggests an opinion. But the show is not about what I think. So if I'm expressing a point of view, which I'm allowed to do on the show, but if I do express an opinion,
it's in the context of, Okay, this is what I think. Now, everybody else who agrees or disagrees, come on in and let's have a meaningful conversation about it.
To hear more of my conversation with Brian Lehrer, go to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, Alia discusses her hopes for New York City housing plans under Mayor Mumdani. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing. As the affordable housing crisis swells across the United States, New York City leads the way with its unaffordable market for renters. The newly elected Mayor Zoran Mamdani aims to freeze the rents on the one million rent stabilized apartments in New
York City. As the terms are often conflated, I wanted Ali Mohammad to explain the difference between rent controlled and rent stabilized.
So rent stabilized is typically buildings that were built before nineteen seventy four that have six or more units, and rent controlled are very specific units that were built before nineteen forty seven, where there I might get the years wrong one or two, but built before nineteen forty seven where there has been a continuous tenant since nineteen seventy one. So if you've lived in your apartment since nineteen seventy one and the building was built before nineteen forty seven,
you might have a rent control department. Now, there's only about sixteen thousand rent control departments left in New York City, and that's because when that continuous tenant who most likely passes away that rent control department converts into a rent stabilized apartment. So that's just a different regulation status, but they have many of the similar protections that the rent
control departments are going to be. Those eighty dollars apartments in Manhattan, and the rent stabilized apartments are not necessarily affordable, and I think this is a common myth in New York.
City as well.
So rent stabilized is just giving you protections against really crazy rent increases, and it protects you against the landlord saying, oh, I'm not renewing you. You have to leave. That's all rent stabilization does, but it doesn't mean affordable. The most expensive rent stabilized apartment on record is fifty thousand dollars a month per month, and that is because over the
years there have been these tax abatement programs. For example, where developers build a building they don't have to pay property taxes for thirty forty years if they make the building rent stabilized. So it's still very common that you will see, you know, these units in Hudson Yards that are rent stabilized, but you do have those protections against large rent increases.
Now many many people come in I'm talking about the mayor's race in Mondani and they come in and they have a lot of hopes and they advertise a lot about what they intend to do. What do you think that's achievable? From Mom, Donnie, what would you like to see him do?
I would love to see his plan of building two hundred thousand affordable units in New York City where they go all across the five boroughs. No neighborhood is going to be immune from getting affordable units built. And this has been one of the biggest debates in New York City. Oh, we don't want an affordable housing unit building in Soho. We don't want affordable housing built on the Upper West Side. We really need to come together as a community.
See a lot of affordable housing on the Upper West Side now as it is, there's a lot of housing authority. I lived on a I used to live in the El Dorado for twenty years and in that West nineties area there was a lot of public housing.
There is, but there's not enough. When you look at how the city has grown, and the vacancy rate in New York City is sub two percent, There's not enough housing. So I would like to see those two hundred thousand units built all across the city in the places where it's going to have the most impact. Right now, there's challenges and need to make sure if you build those homes, there's infrastructure to support it, schools, transportation, all of those things.
But if he can really execute on this vision, the city is going to be in a much better place than when it started.
You look at the city and you say, going in across all five burroughs, and I'm assuming there's some watchdogs groups like your own similar where the mission is to locate where more likely could that go? You either have to identify a insignificant amount of open land that's there to build houses on within reason, or you're going to
tear something down. When Columbia decided to expand their campus and they went and bought all these muffler shops or whatever was up there adjacent to them and ripped everything down, ripped down like a whole block, yep. And they're going to do like the wall and have more wall and everything, you know, their campus, their private campus. Where do you think the housing can be built quickest?
Yeah, it's a great question. Even you know to your comment about Columbia, they have a very dark history when it comes to their expansion and displacing communities. I think we need to be really intentional that if we're going to be aggressive with this plan to build housing, it needs to make sure it's taking into consideration the wants
of the community. Give you an example in Bedstide, there was a project to build an affordable housing building in a parking lot beside a church, and there were protests and people were upset about this. How could you build this beside the church. We weren't tearing down the church or anything like that. This was a vacant parking lot that hadn't been used. And there are places like that
all across the city. My friends and family hate me because every time we're walking somewhere in New York, I'm like, that could be housing. That could be housing. This could be housing. It's abandoned parking lots, even in Manhattan. So I think that there's a lot of opportunities to build the housing that we need without displacing or changing, you know, the culture and facade of the neighborhoods that we hold.
Dear, you're doing that work to your knowledge, now of identifying where the housing can go. Is there a group you work with or admire or are aware of who.
Is Yeah, you know, citing that city council members, there's a lot of city council members that are taking this task really seriously. One or two Tosa, for example, he's a city council member in BADSTI who was behind that
project close to the church. And I would really encourage other council members to follow suit and identify those development areas in their community and do it in a way with public input, of course, but with a sense of urgency, because we don't have five years to just argue and debate what color the brick should be. We need housing yesterday.
Well, in that way, that real estate is always someone's equity. There's a town I work in in a film festival culture, and there's a movie theater there which does okay in the captive summer months. This is out on Long Island. The guy that owns the theater, he's never going to sell it to us, never we've begged him. We've gotten people with a lot of money, some rich monsters of our activities. We thought we could work it out. Had a number that made sense for everybody. But it didn't
matter what the number was, he was. And you always realize that there are people out there, a huge number of them, who are never selling their land or their property. This is of a value them they think is only going to go up. Is that a problem you come up with in New York.
You know, it's a good point with the theater example. Real estate is emotional. In New York City. It is emotional, and anybody who's bought or sold a home knows this. People think their houses are worth way more than it actually is because of the childhood memories you have from that. It's just not true. I would say in New York City you do see a lot of buildings change hands. I don't think you have the same stubbornness when it
comes to real estate because it is a business. But the investors that have done the best are the ones that have bought and held and never sold. And this is where you see the most success in New York City real estate portfolios. You bought a couple buildings in the fifties, bought a couple buildings in the sixties, and you kept just building the portfolio. So maybe there is a little bit of stubbornness. But the buildings in New York City are already residential units, right, so you don't
have this. You know, the garage owner won't sell because we want to build housing. I don't think that's true. I think a lot of those businesses they do end up selling to developers and getting those buildings built.
Co founder and CEO of open iglu Alia Mohammad. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Mohammad tells us how to find a rent stabilized apartment in New York City. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing. When open igloo first began in twenty twenty, its primary goal was to bring transparency to the New
York City rental market help for renters. Open Igloo provides a platform for tenants to review their landlords and buildings. By twenty twenty two, open igloo was listed as one of the top one hundred apps in the App Store, and since then has grown to help millions of renters in the Five Boroughs with such success. I was curious how Alia plans to grow open Igloo beyond her original mission.
I got asked all the time, when is open agglu gonna expand beyond even New York City. So we started the platform to help renters do research, and we've really evolved into a platform where people can find an apartment. And when I say that, I mean do the research, find the apartment, schedule the tour, apply for the apartment, pay sign all within a digital and transparent platform, because what we commonly hear from New York City renters is
the scams. Okay, I found the apartment, I scheduled the tour, the broker ignored me, never showed up. Or I applied for the apartment but there were fifty other applications and I didn't get it, or there was a bidding war, or it was a made up scam to begin with. So these are the challenges we really want to tackle for renters and help them not just during the due diligence phase, but really throughout their entire rental journey, and not just for their first apartment, but for their second
apartment and their third apartment. I think the thing that always frustrated me was Why is it so hard to get an apartment the second apartment. I just already have one year of rent payment history. I'm a good tenant, everything's good. Why do we need to go through the same application system all over again. So I think if we really scale open Igloo to make it this digital platform, we can make it a lot easier for renters all across the country.
How much does an organization like yours at least attempt to locate housing for people outside the Five boroughs? You want to say to them, here's some things that are more affordable for you in New Jersey, in Westchester Lower Westchester. Are there areas where the City of New York could be cooperating with other cities and other states in terms of building affordable housing outside of the.
Five borough Absolutely, I mean you've definitely seen this happen with New Jersey, a lot of New Yorkers moving to Jersey City, Hoboken, even deeper into Jersey be definitely more affordable in New York City. But also the quality. Right you talk to anybody who lives in Hoboken, They're like, I've got a pool, and I got a gym, and i got a rooftop and I'm paying twenty two hundred dollars a month, which is considered cheap to your average New Yorker who pays for rent here. But I think
there's definitely room to collaborate with other cities. But what I would really like to see the city focus on is the Five Boroughs, because there's so much work to be done here in the outer Boroughs, in the Bronx, in Staten Island. There are opportunities all across the Five Boroughs to build more quality, affordable housing for people who want to live here. Right, And I hear this all the time. If you can't afford to live in New York,
just go somewhere else? What about New Yorkers? What about people who were born and raised here and their families are here, and their kids' schools are here. It's not as simple as saying, just move to New Jersey. There's twenty two hundred dollars apartments over there. We really need to solve it within our our own four walls.
How does somebody find a rent stabilized apartment in New York?
So funny you ask. So you shared earlier about the Village Voice having to circle classifieds, and you know trying to know somebody who knows somebody to get your hands on one.
Of these apartments.
This was the old way of finding rent stabilized apartments in New York City. And there's a new way that we've been really focused on at Open a glu, which is identifying where these vent say they.
Were previous rather than old. So don't say that's the old way, it's the old way.
To sorry, the former way, the previous way. Thank you, Yes, you're welcome. I apologize please.
So now we you.
Know, we really want to try and come up with a digital and transparent way of identifying these apartments. So in New York City, every single landlord is required to register their rent stabilized apartments with the state, and we've taken that data and we've put it on open a Glue so that you can go and you can search for I want two bedrooms in this neighborhood at this budget, and I want it to be rent stabilized, and we will show you all the units that are available that
are in buildings with those stabilized apartments. There was a recent law that passed, the Rental Transparency Act and went into effect just this month that requires landlords to post notices in their common areas if there are rent stabilized apartments in the building. And this law was to try and help renters who are already living in the building to know if maybe they have a rent stabilized apartment
and know their rights, et cetera. But it's not really that helpful to people who are apartment hunting because you don't go door to door and sort of poke your hat into these vestibules. So this is one of the ways that you can find a stabilized apartment is going to opening.
What's your evaluation to the extent as it relates to your work, as it relates to people trying to locate even remotely affordable housing. About the real estate companies in this city, do they I mean, do real estate companies when people go and say to them, I want to get in an apartment and you sa, how much I have to spend and you're like a normal average person who wants to be able to spend twenty five or thirty percent of your monthly income on the rent? Are
they laughing in their faces? And now do the real estate community community they don't get it sometimes?
Right, you definitely have conversations with those brokers that say, oh, you're what you're looking for is completely unrealistic, Like I can't help you, it's not out there. Yeah, your budget is less than two thousand dollars, like good luck, move out of state. And you know our answer is yes, it is very difficult to find those cheap apartments, but
it's not impossible. You need to be intentional, you need to be focused, and you need to leverage the tools that are at your disposal, everything from our platform to the affordable housing lotteries to you know, staying close with your uncle so that you can inherit the apartment.
When I was going to school in Washington, which was the first city I lived in. When I was in DC to go to gw and they were saying, how DC was the opposite of New York. We're in DC, all the wealth was in the center of town, and you lived in the suburbs going outward to Bethesda and Silver Spraying and so forth, and the Virginia suburbs, and that New York was the opposite of that. All the wealth is in the heart of the city, and everybody who doesn't have any that has less money and less
economic opportunity to live outside and the other boroughs. And I'm wondering, is there a bor you think is the most ready to be redeveloped now with affordable housing the Bronx.
Perhaps the Bronx definitely, but that comes with a lot of challenges. So we've seen projects open up in the Bronx that aren't truly affordable.
Right.
You look at the area median income for some neighborhoods in the Bronx forty fifty thousand dollars a year household incomes and the apartments are being priced at thirty one hundred thirty five hundred four thousand. Because these brand new, beautiful luxury developments. So it's not just enough to build the housing. The Bronx got a lot of new housing over the past five years. Problem is, no one can
afford to live in them. So this is something that we really need to get to the Crux to But the Bronx is a big burrow and there's a lot of development opportunities there. My fear is that if we continue to build these luxury apartments, we're not actually going to solve anything.
Now there are unscrupulous obviously landlords. I've had a couple of not many, And we hear about people who don't get their deposits back. What remedies do they have available to them.
If they don't get their deposit back from their landlord. It's definitely something that happens in New York City. We actually track data about this at open igloo. The good thing is that seventy percent of renters report getting their complete security deposits back at the end of their lease, and it's a thirty percent that don't. And I'm sure there's a percentage of those that maybe there was something that they did break and something should have been retained.
But if a landlord unjustly keeps a security deposit, you can file a complaint with the Attorney General or you can take them to Small Claims court. Within fourteen days of your moveout, and this is a law in New York City, within fourteen days of your move out, the landlord has to send you an itemized receipt of why they are keeping or retaining the deposit. And if they don't send that to you, they essentially forfeit it back to you. So those are the past to try and
get it back. At open Igluo, we really want renters to do research on the landlord before they move in. Do they have a reputation for not returning security deposits? And this is data that we track and display on our platform so that you can avoid those places and hopefully avoid of that more of.
Them that you want to admit too, that we want to imagine in terms of that, don't give them their money back.
Absolutely, yeah, definitely, it's it's a common practice. I'm happy that it's not as common. It's not the majority of cases, but there's definitely landlords that are notorious for never giving security deposits back. What renters will commonly do, and this is you know, not legal, is they will use the security deposit to pay for their last month's rent and then they don't have to deal with this, you know,
potentially confrontanial arrangement. I sort of have a controversial take on this where I tell renters do not use your security deposit as your last month's rent, because there is another law that says you were supposed to earn interest on your security deposit. So if you use your security deposit to pay last month's rent, you're essentially forfeiting the interest that your security deposit earned over that however long you lived in the apartment. So that's that's my advice
to renters, is you know, collect that interest. I know it might be little, but if you live somewhere for five ten years, it adds up.
My first department in New York that I bought was a condo, and then I moved into the Eldorado. I went from a condo to a co op. And now I'm in a building that's a condo. And I have been told by the brokers we've dealt with and those people who've tried to make an offer for us in our building that there's much more of an attraction toward condos now than co ops because a lot of people don't want to pull their pants down and show all their finances and everything else, like none of your business,
you know, exactly. So my building is lower Fifth Avenue, and all that east of Fifth Avenue to Broadway area near Washington Square, all that area is mostly co ops, and the ones that are condos are thriving. Yes, you know, everybody wants to come and live at a condo because they don't want to deal with the board. And we've had a lot of people connumbering our doorbell and ask us to buy our apartment.
Don't get me started on the co ops. And it's one of those things, Alec that I tell renters never rent in a co op.
Let's get you started. Go ahead, let me start this rant.
You know, co ops are great, they're beautiful, right, some of them are beautifully maintained. But when you're a renter in a co op, it's difficult enough to be an owner in a car, right, But if you're a renter and a co op, it's a whole different story. Why because you are not protected against a lot of things that renters are protected against in normal buildings. So i'll give you an example. In New York City, the maximum that a landlord can charge on a rental application is
twenty dollars simple credit check, background check, et cetera. In a co op. There is no cap in condos as well, So co ops can charge one thousand dollars for a rental application two thousand dollars, and they will. And it's essentially this way of discriminating against renters, to say we don't like renters here, and if you can't afford the non refuehightory, yes, if you can't afford the non refundable
two thousand dollars application, we don't want you here. And I think there's something that's got something's got to change there. Even term limits, right, A lot of co ops have rules that an owner can only sublet their unit for two years at a time. So as a renter, you move in, you're just kind of getting settled. You've already paid all of these fees, and two years later you
have to leave because of board rules. So I think from a renter's perspective, living and renting in a co op is a no no for me.
What do you know about the air conditioning situation in New York that's coming up.
I have been talking about this for years and years. So in New York City, there's very strict heat laws.
Right.
New York City landlords are legally obligated to make sure that their renters have working in sufficient heat because, as we're seeing, winter can be dangerous and people do die in their apartments, especially vulnerable elderly New Yorkers. There's a law to propose something similar for air conditioning. Anyone that has spent a summer in New York City knows how disgustingly hot it can be, but also dangerously hot.
Right.
So a lot of New Yorkers they live without air conditioning, and this law would propose that landlords have those same obligations to air conditioning as they do to heat. Now, they wouldn't necessarily be obligated to pay for the air conditioning the electrical bill, for example, from running the air conditioner, but making sure that the apartment is outfitted with an air conditioner. But in New York City, for example, every single summer, cooling centers open up all around the city.
Are cooling buses, Yes, you're.
The cooling buses. They have doing the same thing right now. During this cold spurt, warming buses all of its buses to warming buses. Hospitals turn into warming centers twenty four to seven. And this is crazy. It means that people live in apartments where they're not getting sufficient heat or they're not being able to stay cool, and they actually have to go to one of these public buildings.
That's talk about the lottery. It's talking about the lottery. What is your assessment of the lottery? Yeah?
Interesting, So New York City has something called the Affordable Housing Lottery. So a lot of these new construction buildings that go up, a percentage of the units need to be allocated for the Affordable Housing Lottery and they are given to New Yorkers that meet certain income restrictions. Right, it's been a very successful program. There have been hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers that have been placed in these units, but it also has some criticisms. Right the
time it takes to get placed. If you make even a penny more than what the band is, you don't get the apartment. Also, some of these bands are allocated to people who make one hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a year, which by New York standards doesn't mean you're a very wealthy person. But it leaves a lot of questions as to why do we need an affordable housing lottery to house people that are making six figures? What about people that make lower incomes?
So a lot of criticisms of the program. There was a recent change, for example, where a person that got placed in an affordable housing lottery, if they moved out, that unit used to have to go back into the lottery. And what would end up happening is that unit would stay empty for months and months. And they've changed the law temporarily so that people can just apply directly, first come, per serve, so we can get that turn happened a little bit faster.
This takes me back to the earliest days of my young days in New York. My uncle lived in his apartment, him and my father. They were from Fort Green, the old Fort Grain, But I grew up and spent a lot of time there as a child with my father's parents, and my uncle lived in Manhattan for years and got in an apartment of rent, stabilized apartment with very modest rent. People don't understand that in New York, with some modest exceptions, whether it's a terrace or a comunity garden, whatever, then
in New York your home is pretty modest. And in California, you go out and the sun's on you and you're going to grow your tomatoes or whatever the hell. But in New York, you've got to open the door and close the door behind you when it's your home and your way. A home in New York is precious, and I've always been taken with that idea of you know, you close that door and you have peace and you have security and I think the work that you're doing
is amazing. I think it's amazing. Thank you very much. And it's just for all the downtown work you did.
Yes, I'm making up for my bad past.
Thank you so much for doing this with us.
Thank you for having me. It was such an amazing conversation.
My thanks to open igloos Alia Mohammad. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Victoria de Martin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplin Woolner. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingwich. I'm Alec Bald and here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio