She lives in a Brooklyn apartment her grandparents called home, a comfortable spread near Prospect Park filled with loving memories.
Now, it’s a money sponge that’s soaking up every dollar she makes.
Nefertiti Macaulay can barely afford the $1,256 she pays each month for her Crown Heights pad — not on the $30,000 she makes every year in sales for a high-end retailer. A year of rent on the two-bedroom apartment is more than $15,000. Throw in utilities, groceries, clothes and a MetroCard, and her $30,000 is gone like a puff of smoke.
Macaulay, 29, is the type of tenant housing advocates point to when they talk about an affordability crisis in New York City. The latest alarm comes from Comptroller Scott Stringer, who issued new data Tuesday showing that, in the midst of skyrocketing rents, New York’s low-income households spend more than 40 percent of their earnings on rent.
For Macaulay, 40 percent would be an improvement.
“Every year it goes up,” said Macaulay, who took over the lease in 2007 after her grandmother died. “Basically, I don’t have any savings.”
Macaulay thought she might have caught a break when her landlord offered her cash to move after a court dispute over her residency. She maintained that she had been living with her grandmother for several years before her death, which she thought would shield her from an excessive rent increase.
The landlord didn’t agree, and the two sides went to court. He offered her $60,000 to get out, Macaulay said.
But she declined.
“It was tempting to think about starting over,” she recalled. “But I have an attachment to this apartment. Besides, I can’t find anything affordable with the same feel and the same space.”
Some months, when money gets really tight, Macaulay thinks about the cash she could have gotten to pack up. The she remembers she probably would have blown most of it on a more expensive apartment.
“There’s nothing in this price for the space that I have,” she said.