Monday, February 19, 2007

Two families, two incomes

Today's Daily News reports on how people have afforded homes in the outer boroughs for more than a century:

Renting rooms, buying a dream

Live in one unit and rent the other!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very good point. The city does everything it can to make a home a building to be milked. A strip mine to rape the community and let future generations to clean up the mess. It has no programs to encourage owner occupied housing (well it does have programs but they are almost always centered around an immigrant theme.)

So in 1907, you have a building with six apartments, three of them occupied by extended family members that share in the building purchase. Total residents: 26

In 2007, you have a the same building with 13 apartments (including the basement), one or two unbroken with an elderly rent stabilized person (ready to be eased into a HANAC 'senior factory' to clear the space) and the rest a rabbit warren of dormitories. The owner? Somewhere in Whitestone/Great Neck. Total residents? Ask Con Ed!!

Anonymous said...

My neighbor, in an attempt to genuinely do some good, used an undocumented Mexican man for household repairs. He was a skilled contractor in his country and a good man, so the working arrangement worked out well. He was also payed a more than adequate wage.

We were told by the worker that he lived in a "hell hole"of a dormitory in Corona, where on Friday nights (pay day) most of the other men were drunk and stole things from their 25 fellow workers who lived in one large room. Fights and disorderly conduct often spilled out onto the streets. Women were annoyed, solicited or even groped!

My neighbor agreed to hold some of the worker's money (at the worker's request) so it wouldn't get stolen while he slept. Then he returned it to him when he left for Mexico to reunite with his family. He was then able to afford to finish the house that he was building for them there.

This is directly from the horses mouth and typical of conditions that exist in these illegal "flop houses" that are scattered throughout Queens!

Anonymous said...

Queen's real estate does not reflect the socioeconomic makeup of it's citizens. The government does not want it's citizen's to live within it's means either. If the working class had a little extra money and time, we may just use it against them.