Question: I am looking to visit New York City for a month and would like to know the best places to stay while I look for a new apartment in the city. I am poor and unemployed at the present time. I would like to avoid a homeless shelter if at all possible. I am considering showering at a gym and doing laundry at a laundrymat.
Thank you,
Poor Future New Yorker
* * *
While many people will tell you that moving to New York City on no income is a bad idea, there are perhaps reasons why you think that moving to New York City is necessary. Many people, both rich and poor, want to live in New York, and who is to tell a poor person they can not live in New York? After all, New York is home to a huge number of poor people, and many of these people rise from poverty and do well.
With that said, you have to realize that living in New York City is very hard even for a person with a job and stable income. For example, getting an apartment in New York City is hard even with an income. Housing is so tight that many landlords are going to tell you straight up that they require 40 times the rent or a cosigner who makes 80 times the rent. For a poor person with no job this is going to be near impossible.
Second, you have to watch out for scams such as the Affordable Equity Project. Many of these "too good to be true" apartment services are flat out lies.
There are areas that are cheaper in New York, such as Far Rockaway in Queens. However, you have to take into account the commute and if living in such an area is really worth it for you. I'm not knocking it, but I am just stating that it's not the same as living in Manhattan.
You are wise to not want to live in a homeless shelter. However, living in the subway isn't that much better and it's not really that comfortable after a while.
Being homeless is no piece of cake. In fact, I have been down that road myself, and I must say that New York would not be my first choice for a place without money.
Whatever you do, do not turn to drugs and alcohol if you are going to be living a rough life in New York. You want to keep yourself out of trouble if you will be living on the streets for any amount of time. Try to keep yourself clean and presentable. There are all sorts of resources in New York for a person who is down on his/her luck. I suggest you look them up and use them.
Thank you,
Poor Future New Yorker
* * *
While many people will tell you that moving to New York City on no income is a bad idea, there are perhaps reasons why you think that moving to New York City is necessary. Many people, both rich and poor, want to live in New York, and who is to tell a poor person they can not live in New York? After all, New York is home to a huge number of poor people, and many of these people rise from poverty and do well.
With that said, you have to realize that living in New York City is very hard even for a person with a job and stable income. For example, getting an apartment in New York City is hard even with an income. Housing is so tight that many landlords are going to tell you straight up that they require 40 times the rent or a cosigner who makes 80 times the rent. For a poor person with no job this is going to be near impossible.
Second, you have to watch out for scams such as the Affordable Equity Project. Many of these "too good to be true" apartment services are flat out lies.
There are areas that are cheaper in New York, such as Far Rockaway in Queens. However, you have to take into account the commute and if living in such an area is really worth it for you. I'm not knocking it, but I am just stating that it's not the same as living in Manhattan.
You are wise to not want to live in a homeless shelter. However, living in the subway isn't that much better and it's not really that comfortable after a while.
Being homeless is no piece of cake. In fact, I have been down that road myself, and I must say that New York would not be my first choice for a place without money.
Whatever you do, do not turn to drugs and alcohol if you are going to be living a rough life in New York. You want to keep yourself out of trouble if you will be living on the streets for any amount of time. Try to keep yourself clean and presentable. There are all sorts of resources in New York for a person who is down on his/her luck. I suggest you look them up and use them.
You are simply not going to find places that cater to those that want an extended (or even short) free or nominal-cost stay in NYC unless you are talking about organizations and entities that cater to the homeless and nearly homeless or very poor (unless there are things that I am ill-informed about). Hence, we are talking about homeless shelters, some private and public social service organizations, and perhaps some churches or other religious-affiliated bodies/churches, etc. But then the same can be said if you want to stay a month in any other city in the United States, such as Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, or you name it.
ReplyDeleteThat is, if you are truly poor (although you gave no details of exactly HOW poor and what funds you may have at your avail and are willing and able to spend), the United States at large (and likely most other developed and even less-developed nations) does not make a way-of-life out of offering free or even nominal-cost accommodations to any and all visitors who wish to come and stay. They figure that if you are truly "bottom-of-the-barrel" poor, you will either find friends or relatives or associates to stay with locally or else you will take advantage of the services offered to the homeless and extremely impoverished populations such as homeless shelters, free meal programs, etc. (to whatever degree such services are offered and available, IF available).
Outside of homeless shelters, the lowest-cost accommodations (though they still aren't too low for a "truly poor" person) are any local YMCA/YWCAs that offer local hotel-like accommodations and any local hostels. Still, they might charge you $40 to $60 (or more?) to stay each night and your accommodation (particularly in a hostel) will likely be in a room with many others in bunk beds all around you. They may or may not include the company of bed bugs. Is that quoted cost considered "low-cost" for you? It may be when compared to a $300 or $500 per night tiny or small room with a bed or cot at a local hotel or motel (which is most likely even a low quote for New York City and the surrounding areas) but, for the truly "very poor", that is still a great amount of money to spend per night. I am guessing that it is too much for you to spend as well.
If you have your own or can get to borrow someone else's motor vehicle or can rent one, you could "rough it" and find someplace(s) in the five boroughs of NYC or surrounding counties to safely park and then sleep in your vehicle. Hopefully you would not get noticed by the police of by others who may report you or otherwise bother/harass you for sleeping in your vehicle. As to whether you'd simply be told to move on by the police in whatever jurisdiction you park in or else maybe even fined or else maybe even arrested, Who knows?
Perhaps someone you know or who someone else knows or whom you befriend who has their own private home can let you park in their driveway or garage overnight and you could sleep in your vehicle This option would be a great deal safer than parking somewhere else where police could harass you and others could rob you blind.
ReplyDeleteYou could take it upon yourself to call around to everyone you know who may have friends or family or relatives or associates living in the NYC metro area who may somehow be willing to let you stay with them for free or for bartering. Bartering means that you do errands or other non-skilled work for them, or some skilled or semi-skilled work for them such as sewing mending of clothes or fix up/mechanical work of whatever type or even computer work or typing or data entry work or cooking or whatever other skilled or semi-skilled work they can have you do for them in exchange for your sleeping accommodations. Otherwise such people may be willing to let you stay with them for nominal cost for your offered accommodations (with them knowing beforehand that you are, as you say, “poor”). Who knows?
Beyond all that has been mentioned above, you are most likely out of luck for a super-high-cost area like the New York City area. But then, as stated earlier, you would hardly have much better luck nearly anyplace else you'd go in the USA or Canada in this present day and age.
It is no longer the 1960s or early 1970s anymore. The time of the hippie counterculture and free places to crash as well as free food and free love and free drugs else is history. If you happen to find any snippet(s) of this lifestyle anyplace, you simply got lucky and that which you found could be just “here today yet gone tomorrow”. Also, the New York City area is not known to have low-cost motels situated here like "Motel 6" or other such motel chains that, at least in the past, charged $20 to $35 per night for a room or other similar very low costs. I doubt that even in the rest of the USA, such chains would now, in this present day and age, charge so low (they would more likely charge $80 or more per night, if not higher . . . or just nominally lower, if lower at all).
Believe me: I traveled all over the U.S. (as a transient) in the older countercultural days referenced earlier and roughed it pretty much ALL THE TIME. Yet I was never adverse to taking advantage of services offered to the poor and indigent or homeless, and other times I wound up befriending or being befriended by varied individuals who offered me their hospitality for varied periods of time in my travels. Alas, those days of free-spiritedness and wholesale trust of random strangers are truly a thing of the past. And if you are female (and even male in many situations), be wary of taking up others’ offers of accommodations in their homes or apartments (particularly from people you don’t know at all or are just merely acquainted with). Why you ask? Well, let me put it this way: some of them might hope to use that situation to take advantage of you in some way while you are depending on them to house you or who otherwise may have intent to do you other types of harm or do things to or with you that are not in your own best interests. It has happened enough times and to both genders (and perpetuated against them by both genders as well).
If you know or learn other options available to you that I am not informed about and it works for you, then the more power to you.
By the way, you didn’t say exactly why you are wishing to visit New York City and why you want to move here. Is it just for a vacation or recreational visit or rather to accomplish some specific task (e.g., to look into the job market or your career prospects here or housing availability here for someone in your life situation, or to look into a support system for living here permanently while being low-income. Do you want to visit an old family member? Your desire to move here is important to consider, and I wish it was known.