How can I find a living situation in NYC that works for me?

August 28, 2019 4:48 PM

Hey ya'll. Here's my story. Most of my life has been centered around New York- I grew up on Long Island, went to school at Hofstra, and now work in Midtown. I studied accounting and after having worked in public accounting for two years, I'm ready to look for a job in private accounting which should afford me less hours and a better income (wooo!!!). Im 27M and make 65K for reference. However, I really dislike apartment living and there aren't many options for alternatives in NYC. Accordingly, I don't know how I can find a livable situation.

My concern is that I don't know what to do when my lease is up, which coincides with when I'm ready to look for a new position. I really enjoy experiencing all that New York has to offer (food! culture! nightlife! theater! etc.) and more importantly, my friend group and family are still nearby. Every weekend, I have a group of 3-4 friends from high school/college that I'll go out with, whether in NYC or on Long Island. On the nights that I stay on Long Island, I'll sleep on Long Island at my parents' place for the weekend and take the train back to NYC on Monday. I really do well having this social network as making friends has never come naturally to me and I don't talk to many people at work as my office is separate from the other departments. Basically I know having this group and my parents nearby is really important.

Specifically, I can't stand the housing situation in NY and apartment living. I hate, hate living in an apartment. I really like having my privacy in a house, and knowing that I can retreat to my bedroom when I want time alone. My childhood house was perfect for this.. My bedroom had great sound insulation and was on a separate floor from the living room so I could talk to my family when I wanted to socialize and go upstairs when I didn't. On top of that I'm a light sleeper so it was important knowing I can fall asleep/nap at any time and wake without having other people interrupt me.

I currently live with a roommate now and I'm starting to lose it. He's the perfect roommate too, has normal sleeping hours, and is generally quiet. Still, after a night of drinking on Friday, I hate going to sleep at 2-3am for example and waking up at 7 when my roommate decides to wake up and watch tv in the common area. I asked him if he could watch tv in him room on the weekends when he wakes up early but he says that he still wants to shower and make breakfast and the noise from the shower wakes me anyway. I know the problem is me and I'm looking forward to the lease ending so I can find a better living situation, though I don't really know if there's an apartment share that exists in NYC that is good when it comes to bedroom sound insolation. I've contemplated living alone but I did that for a year in college and it was really hard on me mentally - I felt like my brain was starting to go feral from not talking to anyone for such long periods of time after class. I know do better with less sleep and a roommate compared to living alone having experienced both and I don't think my salary would give me a large studio anyway.

So what should I do for my next move? I really don't want to live in another apartment and have to go back and forth with a roommate over quiet hours each night and morning. I don't want to live alone and constantly feel lonely and lose having someone to talk to after work. Nor do I want to give up my friend group and living nearby my parents as I really do enjoy seeing them - I'm home with them on average every other weekend. I know the problem is me, I'm not arguing that, I just want to make this work! Here are some ideas I've come up with, I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Regarding work, I'm pretty confident I can find an accounting job in a new city if I wanted to.

- Continue living with a roommate in a NYC and just accept that I'm going to be cranky and sleep deprived
- Get a studio in NYC and wind up probably seeing my parents each weekend. This would probably be last on my list, I really, really, disliked living alone when I previously tried.
- Move to a neighboring city (Stamford? Philly?) and live in a house / row house which should give me more space/privacy/quiet. Can visit NYC on the weekends but will see my friends/family less bc of proximity. Also, I don't really want to start over in a new city just because of a better housing situation.
- Rent a house in the Long Island suburbs/commute to NYC or work on LI. I would lose having access to everything NYC has to offer though and the LIRR is exhausting.
- Move back in with my parents (shutter) and commute to work in NYC or LI. The benefit here is that I'll save on rent but what's the point of saving if I lose my independence? See above with LIRR too.
- Find a house share in the bronx (is there one that will give me enough space/is significantly bigger than an apartment?). Would this be any better/different than commuting from LI?

Also a small consideration but I also participate in big brother/big sister so I don't want to lose my little in NYC either.. I see him each weekend and have been for 2 years now, it's been a really fulfilling relationship for both of us.

I wish I just had a girlfriend and can live in a 1BR with her wherever she wanted, haha. Anyway, looking to hear your thoughts on this - I hope this is the right forum and I'm sorry for the essay. Thanks!

posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover to Work & Money (20 answers total)

I live in Stamford. Except for places within walking distance of Grand Central, it's a tough and expensive commute. Also, an expensive housing market. If you can't find what you want on LI or in Westcester, I don't think you'll find it in CT either.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:16 PM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hm, I think you might be over complicating this. It seems like the actual problem is not whether or not to continue living in New York. But rather, whether to continue sharing space with a roommate or live on your own.

Your conflict is: 1) Living with a roommate means you have to negotiate sharing a space and noise, and you're a light sleeper, but 2) you get lonely in the evenings if you live by yourself.

The last four options you present seem to replicate either Problem 1 or Problem 2 in some way, while also giving up the one thing you know you do like about your current situation, which is living in NY close to your social network and all the things that make your life fun.

Moving out of NY won't solve your actual problem (live alone or with a roommate), but it would create new problems that are really important: cutting you off from your existing social network and the things you love doing!

So in terms of your main dilemma: to live alone or live with roommates. Maybe think about what made living alone so hard last time, and come up with some strategies to address that. If its the fact you were lonely on your own in the evenings, that's a totally valid thing but also quite common. I'm sure people on here could help you brainstorm suggestions. A few possibilities that take advantage of video phones...

- have a buddy you check in with every night on the phone, text, or over skype, once you get home and/or before you go to bed. Just to chat over the mundane kind of 'so how was your day' small talk, while you make dinner or whatever.
- I once knew someone who was in a long distance relationship. She and her girlfriend would both have skype on every evening, all evening, propped up on the table. Sometimes they chat, other times they would just be sitting watching tv, reading, making dinner or whatever, each in their own house/state, occasionally one or the other would say something. Sounds weird, but apparently it worked for them!
- if there's a tv show you enjoy, arrange to watch an episode weekly with a buddy and chat at the same time. Either they come over to yours, or you both watch while chatting on the phone.
posted by EllaEm at 5:22 PM on August 28, 2019 [13 favorites]

Also, you might want to think about the fact that you are no longer the same person you were in college.

Living on your own when you are a 20 year old college student, when you don't really know what you're doing with your life yet, and everyone else is in dorms and apparently partying 24/7 without you, is a totally different thing to living on your own at 27 when you have a good strong friend-network, live in a town you know and love, and have got your shit together.

You know yourself better than strangers on the internet of course, but just because you had a bad experience when you were in college, doesn't automatically mean it will suck now.
posted by EllaEm at 5:28 PM on August 28, 2019 [19 favorites]

Brooklyn has row house options and LIRR station at Atlantic Ave.
also
Check into a white noise machine/ear plugs. Test this out with your current roommate situation. Many people think of these solutions as being for falling asleep, but they are also useful for staying asleep.
Finally, how many square feet are you sharing? I know there are 400 sq feet apartments that are "2 bedrooms" and....that would drive any person crazy because one of the bedrooms used to actually be a living room. Consider a bigger apartment. There are 2 and 3 bedrooms available the northern parts of Manhattan that offer enough distance from the kitchen that the roommates don't get woken when someone puts on coffee and cooks eggs.

As an aside, it might also (will) really help your quality of sleep and other life stuff if you have a more regular sleep schedule and don't stay out till 2 or 3 drinking. That is a wild swing to be happening on even a weekly basis. It's worse if you're out late two nights a week.
posted by bilabial at 5:33 PM on August 28, 2019 [7 favorites]

I think a group house situation (where the bedrooms are on a different level from the common areas) would be perfect for you. Unfortunately I’ve only ever lived in smaller cities, so I can’t help you with location—but if I were you I’d check Craigslist for group houses in boroughs that would be convenient for you. Read posts carefully and look for ones with people in your age range that are balanced (not “must be quiet” or “we rage all night long wooo”), probably no more than 6 people in a house or else it can be too crazy.
posted by sallybrown at 6:04 PM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

There are some parts of Brooklyn and Queens that have non-row standalone houses, some of which are shares/group houses. If you think that you might be able to tolerate living with roommates (it would probably be plural roommates, since a lot of these are old large Victorian houses) in a house rather than apartment, it would be worth looking at options in those areas, especially if you could find one where you're in an attic room or on a floor with only one bedroom. There are definitely options of this sort in Kensington, Ditmas Park, and Midwood, for example, and the price range for rooms in them is similar to or less than most apartment shares in the same area. You'll have to really comb the listings on Craigslist etc (also check out the Listings Project, where I've seen a number of these pop up) to find them, but they exist.

Alternatively, if you think living in shared space is the primary problem, you could look for studio apartments on the top floor of the building, which would cut down on transferred noise. Your price range probably means that the Bronx (or maybe Washington Heights) or a neighborhood further out in Brooklyn or Queens would be the most likely options. You could try subletting a studio for a few months to see how living alone works for you if you aren't ready to commit to a longer-term lease.
posted by karayel at 6:26 PM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I live in Ditmas Park and love it here but based on the houses I've lived in and visited I strongly doubt a house share situation would actually be any better than an apartment share. You're still going to have just as many, if not more, roommates, and generally the acoustics and stuff in those houses are not great. Good luck; I feel for you, I just don't think sharing a house instead of an apartment is going to resolve your underlying question.
posted by ferret branca at 6:32 PM on August 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

It sounds like your primary issue with your current situation is being woken up by your roommate on weekend mornings. Is that it? I totally get how that can feel intrusive and infuriating.

Definitely get a sound machine for the time being, even just to make it to the end of your lease with some sanity intact. I find that playing white noise on my phone doesn’t produce a full enough sound to drown out disturbances, but it could if you connect it to a larger speaker. I prefer cheapy sound machines like this or this because I can just turn it on and not have to mess with a fiddly app or speaker. Turn the volume up louder than you’d think you’d like it to be because it has to drown out other sounds. Add some earplugs if you can tolerate them and sleep in until noon. I find the wax style earplugs to be more comfortable than the compression type.
posted by defreckled at 6:43 PM on August 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Good earplugs and noise-reducing or isolating earphones solve so many of life's problems. I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that. Being a light sleeper and needing quiet can be an issue with noisy neighbors or locations as well as roommates, so regardless of whether you live alone or not, it's worth first taking steps to make progress on that front.
posted by trig at 6:45 PM on August 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm not certain that living in a studio will solve the problems you think it will. I've lived in studios in NYC and neighbor noise can be just as much of an issue as roommate noise, especially in buildings with very thin walls. I think your best bet is to try to learn to sleep better with noise. I sympathize because I too am an extremely light sleeper, and light wakes me up too. Basically *anything* wakes me up, and this has been a problem in studios (hearing next door neighbor's TV, hearing dog barking elsewhere in the building, hearing the woman upstairs walking around on wood floors in her high heels early in the morning before work). Smelling cigarette smoke drifting in from neighboring apartments bothered me too.

I eventually came around to the idea that it's far more effective for me to solve these issues on my side rather than trying to convince my neighbors to be quieter, smoke less, etc. So now I wear earplugs to bed every night (they take a few nights to get used to but now they're the best thing ever - and I can still hear my alarm, they just muffle everything else), wear an eye mask to bed to deal with morning light, and bought an air filter in the apartment with the smoke. I suggest you try these strategies and I think you'll be much happier and get more sleep regardless of what living situations you may encounter in the future. Good luck!
posted by sunflower16 at 6:50 PM on August 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Blackout curtains can do wonders for restful sleep.
posted by kokaku at 7:26 PM on August 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

NJ? Ear plugs? White noise? Putting a towel at the base of your door to block the noise outside the room?
posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. at 8:29 PM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm going to agree with all the votes for ear plugs and/or white noise. I work night shift from 7pm to 7am, and been apartment living in urban areas for the last several years, meaning that my sleep hours are everyone else's busiest and loudest hours. A white noise machine (I used a box fan for years; now currently using this), ear plugs, and black out curtains have been my best friends for years. I have also found that placing acoustic foam behind canvas pictures and putting them on the wall can help reduce the echoing effects of sounds as well.
posted by Thirty7Degrees at 10:41 PM on August 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hi there, sounds like you might be interested in living in Brooklyn or Queens...
I live in a house in Cypress Hills Brooklyn. I'm a five minute walk to the J train which gets me to the LES in half an hour (less when it's skip stop). I'm a ten minute walk to the Broadway Junction stop, which has the A,C, L, J trains, and the LIRR is there too, making getting to your folks easy peasy.

No one seems to know about my neighborhood, but it's pretty amazing. As mentioned, super easy to get to Manhattan, we're adjacent to Ridgewood, Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and East NY. We have this awesome park called Highland Park, which is divided into two sections, Upper, with old growth trees, stone bridge, legal dogs off leash before 9 am, and Lower, which has 20 tennis courts, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, handball courts etc. The Ridgewood Reservoir tucked right between them with the newly refurbished jogging trail running all around it is impressive in it's own right.

The neighborhood is green on the safety maps, and chock full of freestanding houses. It is difficult to find rentals here because it's a lot of families, but they are popping up more often. I bought my place because it was one of the only places I could afford (and I got a two family house in the process!).

If you drive it's a pretty easy neighborhood to get to because the Jackie Robinson is right here (For reference, I have a place upstate that took me just under two hours to get to when I lived on the lower east side, from here, even though i'm a half hour away from LES driving wise, it only added ten minutes to my trips upstate because the Jackie Robinson connects to highways).

A friend came and lived with me this past year and it was hard to tell when he was in the house. It's not a huge place, but big enough and with enough rooms that if we didn't want to see each other it was very easily accomplished. The solid old plaster lathe walls and solid wood doors didn't hurt as far as noise reduction.

I know several of the people who bought places here recently either do house share rentals or rent the second part of their house (almost all are divided into two family set-ups), but I think they rent mostly through word of mouth.

Seeing as you divide your time between LI and the city, this neighborhood seems like an ideal spot with easy access to both. The neighborhood is not gentrified at all so the are no coffee bars or hipster places here, which can be a huge downside if you're looking for that.
I'm having a backyard cookout/meetup in the next few weeks if you want to check out the area.
posted by newpotato at 3:16 AM on August 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

Since it sounds like the biggest problem is roommate's noise getting in to your bedroom why not put some money and effort into soundproofing your bedroom? I googled "soundproofing on the cheap" and there were lots of ideas. Some of them would take time and money, but that's nothing compared to the effort and expense of moving.

Even if you found a great house share there's no guarantee you wouldn't be bothered by your (probably multiple) roommates' noise, so you might have to tackle this problem even if you move.

Maybe coupled with the earplugs and white noise, soundproofing could let you keep what's good about your living situation and cure what's annoying you.
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 5:56 AM on August 29, 2019

Another plug for Queens - You can get more space for the $ (even with roommates), easy access to midtown (7 train is particularly decent) and LI (LIRR stops through Queens).
posted by icy_latte at 8:14 AM on August 29, 2019

Response by poster: Newpotato, can you rent me a room? Haha

Just to add a little more regarding sleep hygiene, I've tried ear plugs, sleeping with a box fan, sleeping with headphones, sleeping with white noise, etc. While all of those things are helpful, none of them gives me the same quality of sleep as sleeping and waking up in silence/without background noise.

I found that headphones wake me up during the night from being uncomfortable, and that while ear plugs block out low noises, they make each louder noise even more jarring/startling. Sleeping with a fan has been the best bet but for it to be loud enough to block out noise from the tv/living room, I'll often wake up during the night with the noise from the box fan. I cant describe how frustrating all of this is on top of work.
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 9:38 AM on August 29, 2019

sleeping and waking up in silence/without background noise

you are not going to get this experience in most parts of NYC unless you look into the upper floors of concrete highrises. Midtown west, Hudson Yards. Try a sublet in one of them and see how that goes?
posted by bilabial at 9:42 AM on August 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

One thing you might want to clarify for yourself in your search—you don’t like being woken up or bugged by the noise of roommates, but you also don’t like the thought of living alone and being lonely. Which is more important to you? I know for me I sometimes felt more claustrophobic (for lack of a better word) in a situation with just one other roommate, because the space was smaller than a group house and I was so close to achieving peace and quiet, and I always knew the cause of the noise (if it wasn’t for my damn roommate!). Whereas in a situation with multiple roommates there was always a little chaos going on but my private space felt more private somehow—the noise was happening downstairs or down the hall, but not directly outside my door.
posted by sallybrown at 9:51 AM on August 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

It sounds like a good solution would just be having a different roommate. YMMV but it might be worth trying to specifically network to find someone else who also really enjoys silence and room with them.
posted by Ahniya at 12:57 PM on August 31, 2019