Monday, May 26, 2014

House Hunting

I'm pretty overwhelmed. I went out to look at an apartment and it led me into peeking into another world, one similar to when I went up to the welfare office a few months ago. The family in the apartment seemed nice, but there were no walls, only hanging sheets. Just one big room for the whole family.

I've seen that, sure. In India. But it was the last thing I expected in the uber-gentrified East Village.

Which turned out to be a lot less gentrified than I expected it to be. There are still homesteads, outposts of people clinging to the community gardens and bohemian lives. And plenty of poor people.

Oddly, it hasn't changed all that much from the last time I spent any real time over there in 2002.

Am I going to buy the apartment? I don't know. I don't know if the credit union will finance the co-op or not. The owner might finance it, but I'd rather just get a mortgage if it's mortgageable. It's an affordable-housing building, and pretty DIY as it's a former squat that was sold to UHAB for a dollar, and to the tenants for $250 each unit. I don't know if I have it in me to gut and renovate, but more importantly, group decisions can be so unwieldy. They make me nervous.

Of course, I am equally tempted to buy one of those rambling pre-wars in Harlem.

Decisions are hard sometimes.



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