Annie Grossman’s new landlord would like her to relocate to an apartment in the landmarked building he owns just down the block. It’s a tempting offer. If she gives up her rent-stabilized, 1,500-square-foot two-bedroom in Gramercy, which she rents for $1,300 a month, he’ll install Annie and her family in a larger, newly renovated unit at the same rate for the rest of her life.
Her current apartment has issues. There was no hot water for several spells last winter. It has a railroad layout, so none of the rooms have doors except the tiny bathroom. There’s so much stuff and so few closets “that we’re essentially living in a closet,” she says. Her three daughters share a full-size bed that fills every inch of the tiny second bedroom, and the larger bedroom, which doubles as a home office with a desk for herself and her husband, also includes a clothesline for drying the laundry. And life there can feel a little eerie. “We are the only tenants in the whole building,” Annie says. “All the neighbors either took buyouts or died.”
And yet their Third Avenue home, also occupied by a chihuahua mix named Poppy and Sarah, an orange tabby, is crammed with far more than her late father’s paintings, three sofas, vintage posters, a playpen, toys, books, plants, pet beds, a piano, a big-screen TV, and a jumble of vintage and Ikea furniture.
