It’s hard out there for a renter, relying on your landlord to actually give a shit about you and your apartment problems. How hard is it out there? It’s so bad for renters that according to Brownstoner, even tenants in Williamsburg luxury building 53 Broadway are staging a rent strike over high electric bills and uh, a lack of a 24-hour doorman. As we speak, Yiddish scholars are feverishly working to come up with a better word for this than “chutzpah.”
Residents at 53 Broadway previously told Brownstoner that they suspect bad electrical wiring has led to electric bills as high as $700 or even $1,043 dollars per month, that they don’t have their promised parking lot with a 24-hour attendant and lift and that their 24-hour doormen were made part-time with no notice. According to the building’s tenants these problems haven’t been addressed since they were brought up in March, so half of the tenants are going to start withholding their $2,704/month one-bedroom and $4,216/month two-bedroom rent.
The energy bill part sounds legitimately crazy, but good luck engendering any sympathy because you don’t have a doorman 24 hours a day. This does require a little bit of bravery though, given that with the way New York’s real estate is working, the current residents could just be bounced out and replaced with faceless tax-dodging oligarchs looking to hide their ill-gotten mineral wealth.