Is there any city in the world more people flock to in pursuit of the American Dream than New York? Immigrants from everywhere, China to Poland, Moscow to Topeka, have been streaming into the Big Apple for centuries, knowing it’s the one place they can scrape together a living for their families or where their Jell-O based performance art might find an audience.

And yet in no other city in the U.S. is it more difficult to achieve that most fundamental aspect of the American Dream: owning your own home. Unless your particular dream was to be a banker, lawyer or doctor, there’s a good chance you’re still renting. Even in the current housing “slump,” apartment prices are still far beyond the financial reach of so many New Yorkers.

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Let’s turn to a topic I imagine every renter has a well thought-out and unbiased opinion on: How much should your landlord be able to raise your rent?

Not much, I’m sure you’re thinking. The economy’s tanked, your salary’s stagnant and isn’t the housing market worse than it’s been in years? No one can reasonably expect you to pay much, if any, more in rent. Right?

Of course, the landlords have a different opinion. You might have heard a little something about the rising cost of oil, a commodity that not only runs your car, but very likely also heats your building. Property owners in the city are claiming up to 40% increases in their operating costs over the past several years, while rents have only gone up about 20%. So a larger increase might just be justified.

I ain’t no economist, so I can’t pretend to know what would really be “fair.” That’s why we have the NYC Rent Guidelines Board, a lovely committee that holds a raucous meeting to discuss and vote on the authorized rent increases for the more than one million Rent Stabilized apartments in NYC. They met last week, the results are in and…

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So the obvious question: How do I qualify for Affordable Housing? How much can I make?

As you might expect with a government run program, the answers vary widely and are often contradictory, especially between individual programs. Furthermore, the rules can be difficult to understand, and management companies may interpret them differently on top of adding their own special restrictions. Which basically means, if you feel poor, there’s probably a program and an apartment out there with your name on it. You just have to find it.

But let’s get a little more specific. One of the most common ways an Affordable Housing program determines eligibility is by setting an income limit at some percentage of the neighborhood’s median income. 40% and 50% are fairly standard, but I know some buildings where it’s up to 80%. So let’s say the median income for the neighborhood you’re interested in is $55,000. (You can find median income info here.) If the income percentage is 50%, your W-2 can show up to $22,750. If it’s 80%, you can rake in up to $44,000 per year. Obviously, the higher the income limits on a building, the higher the rent will be.

For a decent starting point for more information, go to http://nyc.gov/html/housinginfo/html/home/home.shtml. But don’t be discouraged by the relatively low number of apartments listed and the general crappiness of the locations. I really encourage you to aim high and conduct your own investigations. As I mentioned in last week’s post, nearly all new rental buildings have at least some affordable apartments. So when you walk by yet another new construction, take note of the phone # and find out how to get on a list for an application. Get on enough of the right lists for your income level, fill out enough applications, and you’re probably gonna land a sweet apartment.

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Affordable Housing exists. I have seen it. In fact, a whopping 20% of the apartments I manage are set aside for low- to middle-income housing. And there’s a good chance you’re missing out on it.

Developers receive huge incentives from the city and state to designate a portion of their units as affordable. So if you thought that Affordable Housing is a fancy way of saying “The Projects” or tenements in the Bronx, think again. Almost every luxury rental built in the last twenty or so years has at least some percentage of its apartments set aside as affordable. How affordable? If you qualify, you could easily be paying $500 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side that most of your neighbors are shelling out well over $2000 for. Not a bad deal if you can get it.

Over a series of posts I’ll be touching on a number of facets of NYC Affordable Housing: how to find it, who qualifies, the difference in programs and much more. However, we’ll start with a couple of rules.

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Imagine: Long weekend away. Hamptons. Your cousin’s wedding in Akron. Wherever. You arrive back at your apartment late Sunday evening, toss your keys in that little ceramic leaf thing you got at Ikea and set your suitcase down… in water.

Uh oh. A brief investigation reveals a very leaky radiator, and judging from the warping in the hardwood floor, this has been going on for at least a few days. Even worse, the antique Persian rug your mom proudly gave you when you finished law school is not only soaked, but horribly stinky: mildew, mold, something foul.

And, wait. Aw, no!! Your Wii, which you had on the floor for some reason you now can’t remember, is totally fried.

You drag your Superintendent out of bed. He manages to stop the leak, vacuums up the water and tells you to call Management tomorrow to discuss the rug and the Wii.

Pop Quiz: Tomorrow, your Landlord is going to say:

a) His insurance will cover everything: the hardwood floor, the rug and the Wii, after all, the leak came from the radiator, which is his responsibility.
b) He’ll take care of the floor, but the rug and the Wii are all you. His insurance won’t cover your stuff unless you can prove negligence on his part.
c) He’s got the hardwood floor, and he’ll pay half for the rug and the Wii.
d) All of the above, even though that doesn’t make any sense.

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I’m sure there are tons of you out there who are frequently more than a month late on your rent, and you’ve never seen the 3-Day Rent Demand I wrote about last week. Instead, you get the banging on the door on a Saturday, the non-stop phone calls, the Soprano-style assurances that the long arm of the law isn’t nearly as powerful as the clinched fist of your landlord.

This, more than anything else, is why it takes so long at times for a non-payer to be evicted. Not the bureaucratic system, but the tardiness of many landlords to start using it. Because even if you haven’t paid in three months and you keep swearing to your landlord the money will be coming soon, then avoiding him until he finally realizes your word—and your personal checks—aren’t so good, he will have to start from scratch with the courts. There’s no speeding it up just because he waited so long to start the process. Once he wises up, you’ll get that 3-Day Rent Demand. And then, if you still don’t pay, the Dispossession Notice.

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Ah, the 3-day weekend! Nothing beats it. No obligations to see family like on Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. Three blissful, work-free days to use however you please.

Unless of course you’re like the many unemployed or non-salaryed workers across the city for whom a bank holiday is just another day you can’t make any money. This could make paying rent this month a little harder. In fact, maybe you’re starting to worry that you won’t make the rent at all, and the truth is if something doesn’t happen soon, you might be looking at a couple of months before you can get the cash together to keep the wolves at bay.

I’m here to help you out. Because the sad truth is that it can take anywhere from 3 months to forever to evict someone for not paying their rent in New York. A travesty of American justice, but one you can use to your advantage. [God, I hate myself for writing this.]

The warnings first, though. Pay your rent. On time. If you don’t, it will go on your transcript. Not the high school one that didn’t really matter. The Life Transcript. Your credit report. Landlords, understandably, are fond of people who pay, so unless you want to steal identities in order to get another apartment later when you can afford it, pay your rent on time. And while I’m dishing out sage life advice, same thing goes for your bills. You should also enroll in your 401K and eat your vegetables.

But if you can’t, if you’re between jobs, or the well of temp work has run dry, and it’s either drinking money or rent this month and we know where your priorities are, then I present you with The Friendly Landlord’s Guide To Understanding the Eviction Process and How Screwed You Are At Each Step.

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The Friendly Landlord got an e-mail! Lisa writes:

I have a question about guests to my apartment. Both I and my roommate are going away for a few weeks, and I want to have a friend cat-sit. He would obviously need to come and go, so I’d have to give him a key. The problem is that my landlady doesn’t allow anyone but I and my roommate to hold a key to the apartment. Is this legal? Is there any allowance for situations like this? If not, can you recommend some compromise I might offer to my landlady?

Since I am The Friendly Landlord and not The Friendly Grammarian, I will reluctantly not address Lisa’s avant-garde syntax (“I and my roommate”?). But before I dive into her actual question, I should provide two disclaimers.

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I’m supposed to be the bad guy-a New York City landlord. And maybe I am. After all, I’ve evicted people and been happy to see them go. I’ve forced a woman to give up her Terrier because the little rat wouldn’t stop yapping. I’ve told an audiophile he can’t use the killer Bose system he spent his bonus on because our walls are under-insulated and even at low volumes the building shakes. Sorry. That’s my job.

But the truth is I’m not so bad. And at the end of the day, I go home to my apartment and become a tenant like everyone else. The real difference between you and me is that when my landlord tries to withhold my security deposit over some funky accounting or tells me I can’t play music on a Saturday afternoon, I know how to fight back.

So maybe I’m writing this to appease my guilty conscience. Or maybe deep down I really do have a heart. But I’m here to share with you the answers I’ve learned to some of life’s most important questions. How do I get out of my lease? Can my landlord really raise my rent $350 a month? How do I get my security deposit back? Can I negotiate this outrageous broker’s fee? And maybe most importantly, where the hell is this “affordable housing” I hear about, and how can I get in on that?

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