Two facts are painfully clear to
New Yorkers: The rent is too high,
and it keeps getting higher.
With the median one-bedroom
apartment hovering around $3,500
a month, New York’s rents are
o cially among the most expensive
in the country. Between 2009 and
2018, the city added 500,000
jobs but only 100,000 new housing
units. The profound shortage
in rental units has forced the city’s
residents to fi gure out their own
ways to live a ordably.
And that — especially for those
moving to the city for the fi rst
time — often means living with
total strangers. This spring,
the magazine visited the homes
of renters who have moved
to the city during the pandemic,
checking in on the pleasures and
compromises of living with
brand-new roommates: the tight
quarters and awkward interactions,
but also the mutual assistance
and instant camaraderie that
arise when people are thrown
together. Some sleep two to a room
or in what’s supposed to be
the living room; many still struggle
to make ends meet, even as they
share tiny spaces. But they
are all making do in a famously
challenging city.
After working his job at the nonprofi t
GLAAD remotely, Edgar Bonilla
fi gured it was time to take the plunge
and move to the city. He found Katie
McDonald and Kayla Hakvaag,
who are fl ight attendants, through a
mutual friend. When the trio met up
on moving day, it was both Edgar’s
and Katie’s fi rst day in New York. ‘‘I
think this is a great starting spot for
me,’’ Edgar says. ‘‘Well, I am hoping.’’
Kayla had already been living in
Manhattan for a year before joining
Edgar and Katie in Brooklyn. She
shared an apartment with her best
friend in NoLIta, paying $980 a
month. When her lease was up for
renewal, her landlord notifi ed her of
a shocking rent increase: She would
now be responsible for paying up to
$1,600 a month. Privately, she says
she’s tired of having roommates and
making small talk in her own home.
‘‘I’m extremely social, but I like to
choose when I can be,’’ she says.
Katie, who moved from
Philadelphia, where her rent was
$400 cheaper, wanted to get out
of her comfort zone. ‘‘I’m actually
making my life a million times
harder,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m still working
in Philly, so I’m going to commute
almost two hours, but I’m living a
dream that I’ve always had.’’
On May 1, three strangers moved
into their three-bedroom
apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
neighborhood of Brooklyn. They
each pay between $850 and $995
a month for their rooms.
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6.5.22 ←From left: Kayla Hakvaag, Katie McDonald and Edgar Bonilla.
