603 Woodward Avenue,

Queens, NY 11385

I was in love with this place because it was one of the only studios in the area I could afford. It’s rent controlled and in a gorgeous old building. I wish I could’ve stayed just for that.

Outside of slightly low light and typical old building downsides (circuits tripping, water leaking) my issues were mainly with the landlord and super and their harassment of myself and my friend. At first I was only put off by the fact that landlord called excessively (just to make sure I would pay rent on time, I did early every month) and the super was a bit too familiar. The breakers flipped quite often, sometimes if I just used my computer and the microwave at the same time, and I’d have to call the super to come flip them on because they didn’t trust me to have a key to the basement. They would scold me for quite some time and guilt me for the fact that they had to bike over because they refused to take the train and did not live nearby. They also scolded me about improper trash disposal (which which was not even my trash) and she admitted that she thought it was mine because she goes through all of the tenants trash, and the items in it “looked like mine.” Things got much worse when I got a job out of state and had to leave my apartment for a while. I asked my friend to house sit for me and I offered to let her sleep there since she was in between places at the time. She took a long shower one day and since the pipes were very old (I was never allowed to take a bath) it began to leak downstairs. The landlord came over and found out she was staying there and freaked out, insisted I was Airbnb-ing the apartment (even though no money was exchanged) and “evicted” my friend on the spot. I immediately sent my friend my keys so she had a place to sleep, and the landlord repeatedly tried to enter the apartment without notice or consent. She would call me 5 times a day threatening various things. As soon as my friend had another place to stay I broke the lease and left, I never felt truly private and safe there and this was the tipping point. I later found out that the super had sent out a pretty transphobic / bigoted email to all the tenants except myself. It was a gorgeous apartment and one of the best studio prices in the area, but nothing is worth all of that.

Stop harassing your tenants and trying to intimidate them

The location is great

The landlord harasses tenants nearly every day about non-issues out of sheer bitterness or paranoia in order to deflect from their own responsibilities of maintaining the building. Refuses to fix utilities/repairs and will pressure tenants to pay out of pocket for things that should be the responsibility of the landlord under building maintenance. I literally was not able to use my shower/bathtub for my whole duration there (driving me to the point of breaking my lease to move elsewhere) because of leaking issues and the landlord refused to fix unless I paid her over $1,000. They are insane about garbage to the point of going through every tenant's trash and harassing them on the contents (i wish i was making this up). Please be warned, there is reason the turnover rate for tenants here is so high and they profit from these antics that have forced so many people to break leases and lose security deposits (and more) just to leave this eternal hellscape.

Also there are at any given time 4-6 older men from the defunct deli downstairs sitting outside the building door loitering/smoking at all times and they WILL stare at you every waking moment you enter or leave the building. Super fun!

get a grip and a fucking hobby outside of tenant harassment