My apartment in New York is the envy of all my friends: a one-bedroom in the heart of midtown Manhattan—a short stroll to Central Park and performances at Lincoln Center. And I pay just $1,300 in rent.

That’s less than one-third of Manhattan’s median rent, which currently hovers at $4,500 per month.

I constantly tell myself I’m lucky. But I’m also desperately trying to move. Why? Let’s just say it all starts with the “poor door.”

My building has two entrances. One, at 1 West End Avenue, leads up through a gleaming, glass tower to 247 luxury condo apartments inhabited by the rich and famous. Apartment 29B, a four-bedroom unit in the building, recently sold for $14.8 million.

This entrance at 1 West End is manned by numerous doormen who cater to every whim of the residents within. The lobby, with its spacious seating area around a fireplace, is as luxurious as what you’d find in a high-end hotel.

But I’m not permitted to set foot in this lobby. Instead, I must enter the same building through a different entrance, around the corner, at 100 Freedom Place South.

Aka the “poor door.”

According to marketing materials, this is not a “poor door.” Rather, it’s a “first-class entrance experience”—a separate, but still nice enough, entry for the 116 apartments within the building’s stone base, earmarked as affordable housing. These affordable units reportedly benefit from a $120,000 yearly subsidy coming from the 247 luxury units, while the developer gets a tax break for housing the poor.

New York banned the construction of separate entries for affordable housing residents in 2015—but not in time for the ruling to take effect in my building.

Meanwhile, Vicki Been, commissioner of the Housing Preservation and Development Department, told the Wall Street Journal that she believes this building serves as a model that signals to its affordable housing residents, “You are welcome here. You are just as valuable as every person in this neighborhood.”

But does this building deliver on that promise?

Life behind a poor door: What it’s really like

For the record, I do not consider myself “poor.” But my income as a Broadway performer, writer, and fitness instructor barely makes ends meet in this expensive city, where one recent study revealed that a $138,570 salary is necessary just to comfortably get by. I make nowhere near that amount.

I had been applying to affordable-housing lotteries for about five years with no luck before I tried 100 Freedom Place South, where applicants could make anywhere from 60% to 80% of the area’s median income. After about six months of paperwork, I succeeded. In July 2018, I moved in.

When I first settled in, I was thrilled. The building was clean, and my apartment has a spacious, modern kitchen. Plus, there’s not just one but two walk-in closets.

Pretty quickly, however, the cracks began to show. For starters, since our address, 100 Freedom Place South, was not officially registered with the U.S. Post Office, we did not receive our mail.

Making matters even more complicated, “our side” of the building was assigned a different ZIP code than 1 West End Avenue—they’re 10023, and we’re 10069. For a while, our entrance didn’t even show up on Google Maps, which became a logistical nightmare for deliveries and visitors, including maintenance and repairs from the power and water utilities, cable company, and others.

Another problem was that while our lobby and hallways were supposed to be regularly cleaned, this rarely happened. Carpets were never vacuumed. Trash was not removed, piling up and causing a stench. For upkeep and repairs, we had our own management company that was different from the company used by 1 West End. Our superintendent, however, lived off site and was managing all 116 apartments by himself—an impossible task. And he was only available from 9 to 5 on weekdays; if problems arose on the weekends, we were left to fend for ourselves.

To make matters worse, our management company was gone before I’d even lived there a year. Needless to say, things went downhill from there before our current management company turned things around.

Life in the ‘Wild, Wild Upper West’

When friends asked me how things were going in my fancy new apartment, I would half-jokingly say I was living in the “Wild Wild Upper West” because it was a free-for-all. No rules. No accountability. No security. While we have some of the loveliest tenants—including lawyers, art dealers, social workers, even a lower court judge—we also have neighbors who are all too happy to take advantage of the situation.

Security has been the biggest issue from day 1. Although the “rich” side has a doorman and at least two additional porters on call at all times, our side has no security. While we do have a few video surveillance cameras, we could never ascertain if they were working—let alone being monitored.

As for our “first-class” entrance, the entry buzzer system was always broken or malfunctioning, so if you pulled really hard on the glass “poor door,” it would just open. Random strangers could (and would) just walk into our building day and night.

Word traveled fast on the street that our building was easy to break into, so we soon had homeless people sleeping on our lobby sofas and squatting in our stairwells. Gangs of teenagers loitered in the hallways after school, and rumors of drug deals in public spaces cropped up.

Packages started going missing all the time. One time, a resident actually had to stop some strangers from just walking out of the front door with one of the lobby couches. We even had a flasher in our laundry room, according to local papers, which dubbed 100 Freedom Place South a “lawless land.”

I (and many other tenants) began carrying pepper spray inside the building, because we never knew what might be around the corner. I’ve had to call the police more times than I can count after witnessing nonresidents wandering our halls late at night, banging on people’s doors.

One of my neighbors actually put it perfectly when he said, “I love my apartment, but I wish I could just teleport in and out of it, so I don’t have to deal with what’s happening in the rest of the building.”

Fully frustrated, a large contingent of 100 Freedom Place South residents joined forces to demand a minimum standard of care. But every time we’d start to make progress, we would suddenly have a new management company and had start all over. There were four management companies in nearly six years.

The fight for our only shared amenity: the roof deck

While “our side” of the building is not allowed access to the building’s indoor swimming pool or other amenities, the one area we all get to share with the 1 West End Avenue residents is the 12,000-square-foot roof deck. I love this roof deck so much, I jokingly call it my “office” during the summer months since I work up there.

However, since our entrance was unsecured and unsupervised, random people off the street were entering and finding their way to the roof. As a result, 1 West End Avenue tried to restrict the affordable-housing tenants’ roof access.

We quickly mobilized, calling politicians and threatening media coverage. We were actually preparing to take the issue to housing court when, finally, the 1 WEA board relented.

Are separate doors ever equal?

We still have lots of issues at 100 Freedom Place South. And naturally, in January 2024, we discovered we had yet another new management company. But this time, instead of blowing us off, the company has been refreshingly responsive to tenants’ requests and inquiries.

For instance, we’d had issues with poor water pressure and intermittent lack of hot water for over a month when the company over. To our shock, they immediately found the root of the issue and got it fixed.

And after six years of tolerating a broken air conditioner/heating unit in the lobby (an issue previous management had told us was “too difficult” to fix), we were thrilled when the new management repaired that as well. What a relief it will be to walk through a lobby that isn’t 100 degrees this summer.

With new management came a new superintendent who, for once, seems to care about us.

He told me, “Look, you all pay rent, too—even if you’re not wealthy like next door, you deserve to have this building maintained.”

Though he’s still only here on weekdays, he’s gone above and beyond. For example, when our “first-class” front door recently broke for the umpteenth time (so badly that it actually came off of its hinges and had to be removed, leaving the entryway wide open), he stayed all night to make sure we didn’t have vagrants wandering in.

Management also assured us that they’re looking into improved security options, which are still desperately needed. In just three months, this new team has accomplished more than we’ve seen in years.

When I told one of the new building managers I was so grateful they were trying to help, after years of us being treated like the building’s unwanted stepchildren, he replied, “For the record, you’re my only children.”

I can’t begin to explain the hope this response gave me. Of course, we’ve heard such promises before, so only time will tell whether we residents will get what we need to remain safe in our building.

Whatever the case, I hope the management company continues to recognize that there are many hardworking people at 100 Freedom Place South.

In the meantime, I will keep fighting for things to improve here. I’m still looking for opportunities to move out, though.

The current owner and management company for 100 Freedom Place South have been contacted for comment but did not respond. 

The post Life Behind a ‘Poor Door’: I Pay $1,300 a Month for Affordable Housing in a Luxury Manhattan Building—but I Desperately Want To Get Out appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.