The New York Times Has Solved The Housing Crisis With A Revolutionary Idea Called "Having Roommates"

Two facts are painfully clear to New Yorkers: The rent is too high, and it keeps getting higher. With the median one-bedroom apartment hovering around $3,500 a month, New York’s rents are officially among the most expensive in the country. Between 2009 and 2018, the city added 500,000 jobs but only 100,000 new housing units. The profound shortage in rental units has forced the city’s residents to figure out their own ways to live affordably.

And that — especially for those moving to the city for the first time — often means living with total strangers. This spring, the magazine visited the homes of renters who have moved to the city during the pandemic, checking in on the pleasures and compromises of living with brand-new roommates: the tight quarters and awkward interactions, but also the mutual assistance and instant camaraderie that arise when people are thrown together. Some sleep two to a room or in what’s supposed to be the living room; many still struggle to make ends meet, even as they share tiny spaces. But they are all making do in a famously challenging city.

THE GREY LADY! AMERICA'S MOST FAMOUS PAPER! HARD HITTING JOURNALISM! REAL WORLD SOLUTIONS! The NYT has just invented roommates. Wait until they discover this guy named Craig who has a list of potential apartments, furniture for sale, roommates, and people willing to dress up as Barney The Dinosaur and take a shit on your chest. 

"Roommates" brought to you by the same publication that told us that the high rents and housing crisis was our fault

Incredible. It's honestly astounding that there was no editor anywhere in that company that saw those headlines and said "eh…maybe not". I am dumbfounded. It should be impossible to be this disconnected from Americans. Making sweeping philosophical generalizations about morality…fine. That is abstract. You might be able to shape or push a narrative. But to tell people that the $3000/month they're paying in rent is their fault and if they don't like just get bunk beds and put them in the living room of a place with one bathroom and a roommate from the internet who leaves their toenail clippings around and eats the food out of your fridge. 

This to me is why you see people talking about the "Barstool Political Party" on the internet. A party of people with normal brains of people who can listen to Portnoy and agree with some of that and then listen to McConaughey and agree with some of that. Those are a couple of mega rich famous people who are seemingly WAY more connected to the every day person than the typical media types and politicians who fuck everything up. Common sense for the common man.