Two NYU grads and a pal who love living in the Big Apple but don’t want to pay its high rents are happy campers — each shells out $100 a month to pitch a tent in a friend’s Brooklyn back yard.
“We’re trying to make ends meet at a time when it’s hard to make ends meet,” said Louis Frank, 22, who set up his $169 waterproof, 4½-foot-by-9-foot tent on a wooden plank in the fenced-in Bushwick back yard on June 1.
“We have parents that could give us money to get an apartment,” the NYU grad told The Post, “but it’s nice to be independent.”
The three one-person tents went up behind an apartment building that has six units. The friend occupies a duplex apartment with five others, said Frank.
The two-bedroom apartment rents for $2,250 and has one shower, said the Web magazine Brokelyn.com, which first reported on the three campers in an article titled “Bushwick Summer Rental: a $100 Tent.”
The $100 fee entitles the three guys to kitchen and bathroom privileges.
Frank, who is from the Boston area, works in a cafe but dreams of being a tour guide and starting his own walking-tour company here, says, “I’m trying to make connections, but no one is scrounging for employees.”
“My dad said this is a harebrained scheme,” he said. “He said, ‘I don’t know why you want to live in a tent,’ but he said the same thing about moving to Brooklyn.”
Simon Levy, 22, of California, who graduated from NYU with a history degree and also works in a cafe, hopes to go to law school.
“Some of the best law schools are in New York,” he said. “New York is the greatest city in the world, but you do have to ask yourself: Is it worth it to live here if you have to work twice as hard to pay rent?”
Their friend Emerson Brown, 22, who attended UC Santa Cruz, is taking a break from school for financial reasons.