2106 35 Street,

Queens, NY 11105

When I first moved in back in 2022, the rent was by far the cheapest on the market for a three-bedroom, 800-square-foot unit at $2,600. My portion was $850 for the first year. However, the rent was raised by $200 to $2,700 without prior notice. Despite this, we decided to stay, and my share went up to just under $900. The following year, it increased again to $2,900—with no improvements to the unit—making it officially not worth the cost, though it was relatively affordable for a while.

EDIT:
I just checked and as of 11 days ago the unit was relisted for $2600

Some of the workers are pleasant—some not so much—but there were a few who would greet you with a smile when you passed by, provided you recognized each other.

Lastly, at the start of the second year, they did install a gate system with keyless entry for the outside gate and building door. This system allowed you to buzz people in through a phone app, showing a live feed or taking a picture of whoever was at the door.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the basics. I lived on the top floor of a walk-up, and the stairs were rarely cleaned, constantly smelled of cigarettes, had gaps between steps, and featured a wobbly railing. Just inside the building, there was an endless rotation of random items (grocery carts, children’s scooters, bikes, etc.). Packages left inside the building were often stolen if not retrieved immediately. Management did nothing to deter package theft, and at time the doors were propped open by one of the works, allowing anyone to enter.

Structural and Upkeep Issues:
The entire foundation of the building is unlevel. Spills in my apartment would trickle from one end of a room to the other. The landscaping work (cutting shrubs, blowing leaves) was done at unreasonably early hours. About 5-6 months ago, they put up scaffolding, but no work has been done since. It seems like one of those instances where the first steps are done just for show, with no real intention of finishing the job. Because it’s a “cond-op,” some units are independently owned and tend to receive more maintenance, taking priority over other units.


Landlord/ managing agent:
My unit was part of the co-op, and our managing agent was Sophia Yan. Despite the numerous issues with the building, she was undoubtedly the worst part of living here. She was non-responsive unless money was involved and in general was a disingenuous and dishonest person. It took weeks of unacknowledged emails, phone calls, texts, and random drop-ins to the front office just to get enough keys for all the tenants in my apartment. When we finally caught her in person—about a month after we’d already moved in and paid rent for the second month—she acted as if she didn’t know who we were or where we lived, despite all of the unanswered correspondence. This became her usual MO—whether it was a faulty doorknob that left us WITHOUT A DOORKNOB for months, a bedbug and ROACH INFESTATION (3+ months for the bedbugs, the roaches were there the entire time we lived in the apartment), getting a new tenant, obtaining a lease for the new year, or resolving MULTI_STORY LEAKS. The response was always the same: complete silence. Not even a generic “I’ll see what I can do.” We were left doing laundry constantly to fight the BEDBUGS in the terrible washers/dryers that, though advertised as “in-building,” were actually about halfway down the block. These machines often failed to spin out clothes properly and would frequently eat the money loaded onto our laundry cards. We resorted to buying roach traps, raid sprays, glue traps for mice, and fly traps for the constant swarm of flies in the hallways. Cooking, something I love, became a necessary evil, navigating through ROACH carcasses and MOUSE droppings just to make a meal. To top it all off, the oven only partially worked, and only when it was set on the broil setting—baking anything required leaving it in at max temperature for about three times longer than normal.

Back to Ms. Yan—when we did manage to confront her in person, she would lie straight to our faces, pretending the issues we’d been emailing her about for weeks were new to her. She’d promise to send someone or to make efforts to resolve the issue within a week, only to disappear again. When it came time to move out, we gave her one month’s notice and asked her to inspect the apartment for any necessary repairs so we could get our security deposit back. Instead, two weeks after we’d already moved into a new apartment and returned our keys, she demanded more pictures of the unit. It’s now been almost a month since we moved out, and we still haven’t received our security deposit. We spackled, repainted, and deep-cleaned every room and took photos of everything and sent them to hed. When I reached out to her to simply to get a timeline for its return, she essentially told us it was too early and that there was not point of contacting her for because there were “no updates” between now and the end of the two week period as she would return it on time. Of course, that time has come and gone, with no sign of our deposit.

EDIT: it has now been over a month since moving out - no security deposit or any further communication from Ms. Yan .

Sophia Yan does not care about her tenants’ well-being, quality of living, or respect for their time and money. I witnessed her being extremely rude to tenants struggling with a language barrier and to other tenants simply asking for keys to the apartment they lived in. She is a rude, careless, and lazy woman whom I wouldn’t trust to run a lemonade stand, much less a multi-unit co-op in a giant 16-building cooperative.

One final note regarding the bed bug issue- we did finally receive a visit from the exterminator about 3 months in - they came and did the usually spraying, but they seemed confused as to why we were having such a persistent issue. We told them that the bedbugs could be coming from neighboring units- I don’t believe these units were ever contacted or given bed bug inspections while we were there, and upon our move out there was also no bed bug notice in the building or any kind of transparency about the buildings history with bed bugs.

Apartment layout was cute
Excellent location

Rats all over the sidewalk
There was a whole police raid for my downstairs neighbors who were selling narcotics who then continued to live there
Very poor management, nothing ever got fixed

Don’t own a building if you dont want to take care of it

It looks very charming and is very close to transportation and the very busy Ditmars restaurant scene.

From my kitchen window, I can see about eight rats at a time. I spent a year walking around the block to approach from the other way because huge rats will run right over your feet. It’s kind of scary. Roaches appeared in the summer and I had to bomb our apartment. The buildings are very old and while some are kind of renovated, we had a mouse in our oven twice because there are still gaps and cracks in the wall despite us sealing things up. The water pressure is laughable during some weekends when everyone in this 600+ apartment complex is home. If I had to do it all again, I would not live in the Acropolis.

Fix the courtyard’s rat holes and figure out a way to better maintain the trash.

Location, that’s all.

-Don’t take the trash out after dark. Rats. Guaranteed every time they will bother you.
-Hire your own exterminator as the building provided one doesn’t do anything for the wide array of roaches/rats/mice running around in and out of apt.


-the courtyard will get noisy at nights with fights.
-security shack is just that. False sense of security. They are never around and can never be found if you need them for anything.
-really a shame this building is the way it is. Has so much potential but have heard (from neighboring buildings) and experienced nothing but problems since moving in.

Individually owned apartments, so landlord was good but building was not.

Nice neighbors but that’s it

Very bad pest problem

Close to everything

Pest control was horrible. We kept the apartment clean but still we had roaches and mice!! The hot water was out very often. The landlord was responsive to the problems but honestly the problems just kept happening. It was annoying to keep having them over to fix things and nothing really got fixed (ig there were holes behind our oven, the landlord covered it and it broke again a few weeks later and then we got so many roaches and two mice).