NY residents for barely a month and we already prepared for a second move.
Despite it all, we still trusted Reggie. He was well known in the airline community, Cam had rented with him for years and we didn’t think he had any reason to deliberately deceive us. Up to then, we accepted that our bad experience had been a series of miscommunications. So, we looked at Reggie’s place. It was a 1-bedroom spot with great light, hardwood floors and he was going to give us very good price. With the mansion situation escalating, we accepted and with all we’d been through, we hired a moving company to transport our furniture. Reggie’s place was great and we were so glad we moved. So glad. Because barely a week after moving, we received messages from a couple of the mansion renters that police raided the mansion in the middle of the night. Everyone was kicked out. If we hadn’t moved a couple days prior, we’d have been out on the street with nothing. NYC is a weird place. Unlivable situations almost anywhere else are normal in Manhattan. A guy at my work in his forties still had three roommates in his apartment. Places like microapartments, studio spaces renting at $2k/month, closets converted into bedrooms or “crashpads” are all normal in NYC. It’s shocking, but normal. So, when we still lived in the basement apartment of the mansion, we didn’t think much about the evolving situation in the upper floors beyond annoyance. The more and more bunk beds, the growing number of people living full time and the weird, thin walls being erected for more bedroom pods. Cam and I kind of shrugged. We didn’t like it, but we accepted it. Amid all of this, we saw a news story about an immigrant family burned in a house fire close to us. They’d been trapped in an illegal residential situation much like the one Reggie was building out. A false wall without a proper fire exit had been erected and the family couldn’t find their way out in the smoke. Everyone died. Days later, the NYPD became aware of a mansion in Queens with a disturbing amount of residents (tipped off by upset neighbors, I’m sure) and raided the place in the middle of the night. No one was able to take anything. Get out immediately, they were told. Upon hearing of it, Cam and I were breathing a sigh of relief that we’d already moved. I don’t know how we would’ve coped if we’d been there, so we cuddled up in our one bedroom spot, feeling rather cozy. It was barely a week before we discovered an eviction notice on our front door.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am a writer. I write. Archives
January 2021
Categories
All
Categories
All
|