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New Brooklyn Millennial Reveals The Secret To Being 'Adultish'
By
Scott Heins
Published Aug 19, 2016
Modified Aug 19, 2016
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By
Scott Heins
Published Aug 19, 2016
Modified Aug 19, 2016
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Most of the people featured in the blatantly trolling NY Times real estate column "The Hunt" are portrayed as annoying but harmless—well-off yupsters molting in self-satisfied chrysalises made of dividend checks and clippings from Kinfolk Magazine who float about the city spending small fortunes on photogenic homes and $288 mosquito nets. The Times's Joyce Cohen has a special gift for finding these precious snowflakes and shoving their sun-drenched kitchens in our faces. And the sun-drenching from this week's "The Hunt" is like that radiant glow you used to get when your babysitter put you in the microwave to dry you off after your creme de menthe bath. This will only take a minute.
Meet Kendall Huberman, a design assistant with a graduate degree from Parsons whose parents gave her money for the down payment on a $400,000 home after she realized that paying $1,800 to live with a roommate in a mouse-infested East Village apartment could be easily avoided by getting money from her parents.
Huberman had her heart set on Williamsburg (duh), thanks to its youthful vibe and bustling live music scene.
But like many hopeful Brooklyn pioneers, she was disappointed to find that even $400,000 won't put you in a studio in Williamsburg these days. Determined to prove that she's "a person who can make a lot out of nothing," [YES THAT IS AN ACTUAL QUOTE NO THIS MICROWAVE DOES NOT OPEN FROM THE INSIDE] she chose to trek through the wilderness to other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Did she bring enough provisions for her journey, which inauspiciously began in the dead of winter? Read on...
One winter Sunday, Ms. Huberman set out for Brooklyn to look at some co-op apartments. She figured she could meet a co-op’s financial requirements, which tend to be more stringent than those of condos, by purchasing with her father.
At a one-bedroom in Crown Heights, she realized how far the neighborhood was from work and friends. With some subway trains out of service that day, the trip was lengthy and confusing.
Things looked grim for our frostbitten heroine as she visited one unacceptable dump after another. She turned down a badly-lit Prospect Heights one bedroom for $389,000 (fair enough) and said no to a similarly-priced Fort Greene place because the neighborhood felt like "an uncharted territory to me and that commitment seemed too daunting."
Enter: the government. Huberman's realtor informed her that despite her giant downpayment check from mom and dad, she could still qualify for a NYC Housing Development Fund Corporation co-op, a tax-subsidized form of affordable housing intended to make home ownership possible for lower-income New Yorkers.
Suddenly a whole new frontier of apartments were within Huberman's grasp, and The Hunt triumphantly climaxes in her parents' check being cashed and Huberman filling her new sunlit L-shape studio with Scandinavian homewares... but still complaining that the building is a walk-up—"I still feel guilty when people come through my door and they are out of breath." Ah, so that's what she feels guilty about. Got it.
And so here we have an upwardly-mobile millennial using her parents' money to claim an apartment through a program that was, at least at one time, intended to bridge the homeownership gap for struggling New Yorkers. For the Times, this is the sign of a savvy Hunter and something to celebrate, and there's no need to bum anyone out by considering how this symbolizes New York's obscene real estate market transforming the city into a Pinterest-board-actualization-quest for people who take the Taylor Swift song seriously.
Wealth does not inherently make one a bad person, but bragging about using your parents' money to game the city's broken housing subsidies takes a special lack of self-awareness. You can blame Huberman's realtor for setting up the deal, or you can blame the currently broken HDFC co-op system that allows this sort of thing to happen repeatedly. But save room to blame the Times for glorifying it—and letting quotes like these hang in the air forever.
"It’s great to own,” Huberman concludes. "It feels kind of adultish and comforting and stabilizing." Yes, there's no greater sign of adulthood then when your parents buy you a home in Williamsburg.
PSA: The NY Times has a weakness for self-parodying trend-baiting, masochistic Millennial obsessing, and the perverse lifestyles of the filthy rich. If a reporter with the Real Estate, Style or Weekend sections approaches you about a story, just smile gently and run in the opposite direction. No one is forcing you to become representative of everything that everyone hates about New Yorkers.
Tagged
brunch hate reads
HDFC
Housing Development Fund Corporation
ny times
NYT
real estate
The Hunt
williamsburg
Scott Heins
Scott Heins is a freelance photo and video journalist based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Gothamist + WNYC. His work often centers around labor rights, housing, and policing. In 2018-2019 he traveled to four states while covering a wave of public school teachers strikes, with work featured in The New York Times, The Intercept, Getty Images, Splinter, and Bloomberg Photos. Scott is a dues-paying member of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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