Renting hell in New York City: how my hoarder landlady ruined my life
Posted: 24 May 2016 16:28
For five years, I lived on the most beautiful block in the five boroughs of New York City, occupying two full floors of a brownstone on a tree-lined street in downtown Brooklyn. It was the kind of block where the gingko trees turned the evening light gold every October, around the same time families dressed up their stoops with jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Think the idyllic exterior of the Huxtables’ house from the Cosby Show. Think the hood of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It – a black creative mecca before the onslaught of gentrification ran every black person out of it.
If my street was picture-book worthy, the house itself was not. I lived in a pre-war building and it chilled me to consider that when it was built, my ancestors were chattel slaves. The facade was crumbling, the iron fence was falling apart. When glass had broken on the front parlor windows, my landlady had replaced them with cheap plastic.
But the house was near many subway lines, the most cutting-edge arts venues, and the best dining in the greatest city on the face of the Earth. For all of this, I paid just $1,000 a month for some 2,400 square feet across two upper floors – the kind of bargain which is the stuff of New York legend.
To get the apartment, I made a two-part devil’s bargain.
First, I had to accept that my landlord was a compulsive hoarder who didn’t want to get rid of things that were trash, if not Level 4 biohazards. She held on to everything as if her life depended on it (and psychologically, it did). And second, I would have to take care of her animals when she went out of town a few weeks each summer. She had a mangy mutt named Timmy*, nearly blind with cataracts and six cats (one had a leg missing, and another only had one eye).
Honestly, I thought I could manage the situation. And regardless, my apartment was going to be so big and so clean. I’d have nine rooms and two bathrooms all to myself. I could fill it with tasteful second-hand mid-century furniture. I could have a full-sized Christmas tree each winter and I could have a boyfriend and cook with him. I could even put up friends and family in one of the guest rooms (that’s guest rooms, plural).
Besides, living upstairs from a hoarder wasn’t so unusual. According to a 2013 article in Scientific American, “Between five million and 14 million people in the US are compulsive hoarders.” Hoarding seems like a logical symptom to appear in a world sick from consumer capitalism, after all. I could deal with it.
I was wrong.
If my street was picture-book worthy, the house itself was not. I lived in a pre-war building and it chilled me to consider that when it was built, my ancestors were chattel slaves. The facade was crumbling, the iron fence was falling apart. When glass had broken on the front parlor windows, my landlady had replaced them with cheap plastic.
But the house was near many subway lines, the most cutting-edge arts venues, and the best dining in the greatest city on the face of the Earth. For all of this, I paid just $1,000 a month for some 2,400 square feet across two upper floors – the kind of bargain which is the stuff of New York legend.
To get the apartment, I made a two-part devil’s bargain.
First, I had to accept that my landlord was a compulsive hoarder who didn’t want to get rid of things that were trash, if not Level 4 biohazards. She held on to everything as if her life depended on it (and psychologically, it did). And second, I would have to take care of her animals when she went out of town a few weeks each summer. She had a mangy mutt named Timmy*, nearly blind with cataracts and six cats (one had a leg missing, and another only had one eye).
Honestly, I thought I could manage the situation. And regardless, my apartment was going to be so big and so clean. I’d have nine rooms and two bathrooms all to myself. I could fill it with tasteful second-hand mid-century furniture. I could have a full-sized Christmas tree each winter and I could have a boyfriend and cook with him. I could even put up friends and family in one of the guest rooms (that’s guest rooms, plural).
Besides, living upstairs from a hoarder wasn’t so unusual. According to a 2013 article in Scientific American, “Between five million and 14 million people in the US are compulsive hoarders.” Hoarding seems like a logical symptom to appear in a world sick from consumer capitalism, after all. I could deal with it.
I was wrong.