Affordable NYC housing - help!

Affordable is probably a relative term. Are you looking to rent or buy? A room or a whole apartment? Makes a difference if you're thinking family or you're looking to live alone.

All of above is generally true, and though rents are high, they've been going down recently by a few percentage points. Blame it on the recession, but if you're employed, now's a good time to renegotiate that lease to your great advantage.

Best thing to do is not to be mousy about it. I could imagine starting with a pity plea for example: "Times are so hard, and it's gotten so tough lately, and I've heard rents are going down all over the city, man oh man what a big difference it would make if..." You could also try the more extreme version: "Times are tough and I might have to move out to save on rent, so, since everybody's doing it how about you Mr. Landlord?"

It's probably good to think about how it's a pain for a landlord to lose a tenant, he has to go looking for someone new, and if you're likeable and considerate, it could be worth the landlord's time to give you some incentives to keep you.It seems legitimate to broach the subject, especially if you've got the "Everybody's doing it" argument and maybe a couple of statistics or hard observations about your immediate area that support this.

NYC sucks to live in......If you make an income of 40000-50000 per year you cannot afford to pay for an apartment or house. Forget about trying to have kids in NYC. You do not qualify for nothing free in NYC if you make 40-50000 per year. You make too much to get food stamps, medicaid and affordable housing lotteries. Even though the government doesn't account for all the taxes that you get taken out of your paycheck. If you want to send your kids to school, they will be stuck in aclassroom of 30 other kids.....most of who can't speak english. Then if you need a babysitter to take care of the child while you work, the good babysitters look for 15/ hour so most of your paycheck is going to a babysitter. If you want your child to join any kind of martial arts programs...you will have to shovel out 200/month for it. Houses in NYC go for 500000-1.2 million dollars and more depending on where you want to move to. The only nice boroughs in NYC are queens and Staten island and queens is way too expensive- Staten island is affordable but then you have to worry about superstorms and hurricanes....Manhattan is way too expensive and there is no parking...the Bronx has some good neighborhoods but a lot of bad ones too and there's too much traffic there and no parking, same goes for Brooklyn.. the cheapest parts of queens are crowded with immigrants as well. NYC sucks to live in.I hate it here. I'm ready to move again myself. Even crossing over the bridge over here is getting outrageous.. and if you do take public transit get ready to take a long ride in NYC digusting subways.