After years of living in New York City, Erica Jenkins has grown accustomed to moving from one apartment to another.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve rented in all kinds of buildings,\u201d she said. \u201cSublets in condos, co-ops \u2014 I think I\u2019ve been in six New York City apartments in 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s become smarter with each search and somewhere along the way she embraced one core principle: \u201cI\u2019ve bounced around forever in search of the perfect New York City apartment but we all know there is no perfect apartment,\u201d she said. \u201cYou always kind of have to give something up.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in the summer of 2025, Ms. Jenkins was feeling like she had given up too much. Her apartment in Long Island City was making her miserable. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a good place to live,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt was on the ground floor, street-facing, super loud \u2014 I wasn\u2019t happy. It was also a small studio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Studio apartments were all she had ever known and it felt like time to graduate to something bigger. Ms. Jenkins has worked as a nurse for 15 years; she survived working in the I.C.U. at NYU Langone Health during Covid, and in 2023 she obtained a master\u2019s degree in nursing administration, becoming a nurse manager. So, last summer when she found herself unhappy in her small, noisy, street-facing studio, a quiet one-bedroom apartment didn\u2019t feel like too much to ask for.<\/p>\n
She started looking around even though a move meant breaking her lease. It was something she was willing to do for the right place.<\/p>\n
Even though she was living in Queens she started her search in Manhattan. \u201cI\u2019ve spent most of my time in New York in Manhattan,\u201d she said, \u201cand I just kind of missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
$1,519 | Upper East Side, Manhattan<\/p>\n
Erica Jenkins, 34<\/p>\n
Ms. Jenkins\u2019s apartment searches were guided by two essential sources of wisdom: her past experiences and her TikTok feed. \u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot on my own,\u201d she said, \u201cbut for this most recent apartment search, I was seeing a lot of TikTok videos from Allia Mohamed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Mohamed is the co-founder and chief executive of a company called Openigloo, which provides fee-based services to renters to better understand their rights, potential buildings and landlords before signing a lease.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllia posts a lot of great content,\u201d Ms. Jenkins said, \u201cand I kind of learned a lot about rent stabilization laws through that, and I had an idea what to look for during my apartment search.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October of last year she found a rent-stabilized, one-bedroom apartment through a StreetEasy search. Apartments that are rent-stabilized have their rental rates and annual increases, if any, set by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. \u201cThis apartment was on the Upper East Side, which I always loved,\u201d she said. \u201cI lived there for two years, so I knew it was a good neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only was it rent stabilized but it was also freshly renovated. \u201cEverything was brand-new and I loved it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was actually on the same block as my very first New York apartment in my 20s. So, it felt kind of like a full circle situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Jenkins put in her application on the same day she saw the place and was approved just a few days later. Before she signed the lease, she paused to give the decision just one more consideration. \u201cI\u2019m looking at the lease and it says \u2018rent stabilized\u2019 at the top,\u201d she recalled, \u201cand I was just thinking it over. I didn\u2019t want to make any rash decision. Again, I was like breaking a lease for this place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rent was just shy of $3,600, a bit more than Ms. Jenkins felt comfortable paying. So, at the last minute, she asked to pay $3,400, which was closer to her budget. The landlord agreed and Ms. Jenkins signed a revised lease for the smaller amount.<\/p>\n
Last October she moved into her first one-bedroom apartment, with plenty of light on a high floor, out of the direct reach of street noise. \u201cI really liked the place,\u201d she said. \u201cIt felt right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even still, there was something about the rent amount that still didn\u2019t quite feel right. It seemed too high for a rent-stabilized unit. \u201cI learned from Openigloo, you can request the D.H.C.R. rental history right away,\u201d Ms. Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
The Division of Housing and Community Renewal is a state agency that can provide a rental history for an apartment \u2014 if it is requested by the renter. That history includes details regarding whether a unit is designated for a particular program, such as rent stabilization, and information about previous rent rates and increases over the years. All of this information is essential to confirm that a unit is being rented for a legal amount.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as I got those keys,\u201d Ms. Jenkins said, \u201cI requested the history.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shared her rental history with Openigloo, wanting a second set of eyes to confirm her suspicions.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that we\u2019re always encouraging renters to know is if their apartment is rent stabilized and, if so, what that means for them,\u201d Ms. Mohamed said. \u201cWe took one look at Erica\u2019s rental history and realized almost immediately that something was not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The details on Ms. Jenkins\u2019 apartment revealed that her rent amount was nearly triple what the previous tenant paid. \u201cI know that they can raise the rent after renovating,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it jumped from roughly $1,100 to $3,400.\u201d<\/p>\n
She felt like she had three choices. \u201cI could submit a rent overcharge complaint to D.H.C.R.,\u201d she said. \u201cI could reach out to a lawyer, or I could just talk to my landlord and try to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Jenkins chose to first see if she could work out the matter directly with her landlord, sending him a letter in November 2025.<\/p>\n
She received a response right after Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was visiting my family and I got an email and the subject was something like \u2018urgent: error made in your favor\u2019 from my landlord\u2019s assistant. I called my landlord and he\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019re never going to believe this. I made an error. I\u2019ve never made an error like this in 25 years but here\u2019s the situation, you\u2019re going to be really happy with your new rent. It should be more like $1,500. I\u2019m so sorry.\u2019 He was trying to be very, very nice. He ended up being really nice. He\u2019s like, \u2018Live there as long as you want. I love nurses.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Jenkins now pays less than half of what she originally thought the apartment would cost. After giving up something for each place she\u2019s lived, she finally found an apartment that gave something back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thankful for knowing about the rent-stabilization laws, being guaranteed a renewal, and having this cheap rent. It\u2019s life changing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve always moved, every year or two, but I\u2019m going to be here for a while. A long while.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years of living in New York City, Erica Jenkins has grown accustomed to moving from one apartment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[174,2954,75,84,83,9,24,56,63,578,13995,15021,52065,14017],"class_list":["post-254492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-content-type-personal-profile","tag-landlords","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential","tag-rent-control-and-stabilization","tag-rent-guidelines-board","tag-renting-and-leasing-real-estate","tag-upper-east-side-manhattan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}