Would You Rent Apartment w/ NO Toilet?

OP, obviously there’s a toilet. The question is: where is it? Communal? In the passage way?

Sorry, it’s a deal breaker for me.

R1 the picture shows clearly there is NO toilet

A communal toilet is ONE thing. Having your refrigerator next to the shower is another thing ENTIRELY.

Hell. No.

I’d be pissing in that tub, I know that much. Sometimes because nature called, and sometimes recreationally.

You'd have to pee in the tub and schedule BMs for the office

I loved the time I got to spend in NY, LA and SF. But, man, I do not miss the cost of living.

Let's all do the waffle stomp!

If there really is no toilet why is the apartment even legal to let?

There are communal toilets.

It has a toilet. It’s in the closet.

R10 you have to hang your clothes over the toilet?

the other questions is, is there a stove or anything to cook on or in?

What does this dump (no pun intended) cost a month?

A sink will do.

What do they think I am? Dumb or something? Why, I make more money than - than - than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!

Ghetto.

I lived in an East Village tenement in the 80s with a communal toilet. I was young. It wasn't that horrible. It was maybe 6 months and I beat it to Brooklyn and a toilet and big bathtub. The East Village had the classic bathtub in the kitchen. Not even a shower. It was a tub. Youth!

What’s the point of even living in NYC now considering you can’t really interact normally with people now and can’t enjoy what it HAD to offer?

If the sink has a garbage disposal, you have a toilet.

Just buy an incinerator toilet, problem solved.

Shitting in the street is a trend now Boomer, get with the program.

I searched for the image and this site shows there's a lav in its own small room.

LOL, I am so happy I left NY.

It's not horrible. Someone could call it home and be safe and dry. I remember when something like rented for 250 bucks a month.

That flat looks like a corridor.

R24 Of course, for that price, you make the sacrifice. $1,650 though?!

I know a guy in the E Village who has a claw foot tub in the kitchen, it’s rent stabilized on top of a 6 storey walk up and the landlord is trying to get rid of him in order to sell the building to NYU. Anyway, only has a handshower, he kneels in the tub to wash himself. His commode is in what appears to have been a tiny broom closet, there’s no sink and no window. I imagine when he shits the whole apartment must stink, he washes his hands in the kitchen sink.

r18

Of course you can interact, millions are doing it. The protests proved if you wear a mask you're safe.

R19, LOL, thank you for that. I needed a good laugh before bed.

Back in my waiter days this older man would come in a lot. Very chatty. He lived at the YMCA & said it was a bed & dresser room with the shower & bath in the locker room. He lived that way for decades. This made me think of that & him.

Ment shower & toilet

Has no one heard of diapers?

Or a cat litter box.

With the right shower curtain, the place could be really cute.

How cheap IS the place?

$1850.00/month

fucking illegal

Do the windows open because there you go

If it really had no toilet, just buy a commode and a bunch of bags for it. Poop, tie the bag shut, throw it in the trash, put a new bag in the commode.

We're having to do this with my elderly mom. When momma can't make it to the toilet in time, the portable toilet has to come to her.

R39 or better yet room with the scat troll, he will even wipe you up with his tongue.

Elderly friend rented an apartment for decades on West 15th off 8th Avenue. Walk-up, shared toilet down the hallway and kitchen sink doubled as a bathtub. Roach-infected beyond belief. Building dated from 1854 and it was rumored that Tallulah kept Patsy Kelly as a slave in a basement apartment in the 40s/50s. My friend's neighbor was a male prostitute who kept a dungeon in his apartment for those special moments. For several decades it was all gay, but in the late 80s that started to change with the arrival of straight women.

I looked at other listings on that site and for five dollars less in the same neighborhood you can get a studio with a toilet. So I don’t get why anyone would rent this place?

The place has a toilet, didn't you read the listing?

While an old building, have seen much older; this one went up in 1931 long after zoning and code changes got rid of old law tenements.

The place at R42 looks much more contemporary. How come these listings don't specify the square footage?

Another unit in same building.

From 1940, before horrid yellow aluminum siding.

Without toilet? Depends, how much they pay you to live there?? Not even in Paris...

Take it back, isn't aluminum siding but a terrible paint job.

OP, that was once the premise of a Candid Camera gag. ‘We find that our tenants appreciate the finer things in life.’

No OP. That's low.

Seems like the perfect apartment for someone who has to go through life with a colostomy bag.

Yes girls, there is a toilet. It is curtained off from main area of this studio apartment.

New York Post covered this apartment few years ago.

Can it be sheer coincidence that this thread is currently adjacent to the thread “Sloppy Joes: The Reckoning”?

A friend had a nice rent controlled place in the EV with the toilet down the hall - it wasn't communal; there were four toilets in individual locked closets in the middle of the building by the stairwell - one toilet for each apartment on the floor. The apartment itself was pretty big, a front room that had an archway to the kitchen, which also had the front door; and a very small bedroom off the kitchen. The kitchen no longer had an old fashioned claw-foot tub, there was a slop-sink next to the front door that was rigged into a shower - the curtain went all the way around, and there were steps next to the sink to climb up into it. There was also a regular kitchen sink. It was a great location and a great price - I'd have lived there.

That kitchen bathtub is a hoot. It reminds me of Michelle Pfeiffer's apartent from Married to the Mob.

R2 is sad and stupid.

I remember visiting a friend in the East Village in the mid-80s. There was a shower nozzle over the kitchen sink.

I'd rather move out of NYC or live in a less flashy section.

Ew! No toilet, shared toilets - dealbreakers😵

R56 couldn’t you put a piece of wood over the tub and have it double as extra prep area for the kitchen or as a table?

R56

Don't laugh; that is exactly what housewives/people did back in the day. Some sinks came with porcelain covers that fitted over so you had a work surface, place to dry dishes, etc...

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For those of you who say using a toilet down the hall is a dealbreaker...is this better?

Is OP a waffle stomper?

r64, that's still quite common in Italy.

When I first started living in Portland I was seventeen and had zero cash. I rented a place in a pretty characterful but borderline derelict redbrick with another guy. We both worked at a coffee shop. Anyway, the place was a single room with a mouldy fitted carpet. There was a hotplate, two mattresses, and literally nothing else except a stained bathub in the middle of the room. It was literally an out of place object. The bathtub was actually connected to the mains, so water came out of the faucet. My friend and me would piss in the bathtub, but if we had to drop a load we had to go down two flights of stairs to the restroom the people on that floor shared. These were old, gross, piggy Middle Eastern men and the toilet was the most disgusting place I have ever seen, even counting the fact I grew up in a rural area with outhouses. Once one of the elderly residents actually shit in the sink and clogged it up. We had to plunger the turd out. I paid ten bucks a week for it in the late 70s. Anyway they day I realized I had to move out when I got back home and there was these two homeless guys fucking against the tub. Later, I found out from my friend that the super was bribed to let them in to fuck because he didn't think nobody was going to be home then. They were old, gross, and smelled rank and they were really going at it noisily, stained jeans around their ankles, skinny hips pumping, yellowed teeth gleaming with spit. I left at roughly the speed of light.

After that I slept rough for a couple of weeks before finding a place at the YMCA.

I lived in a bedsit in London back in the 80s much smaller than that with shared facilities down the hall. We had to have our 50p coins ready for bath hot water. The bathroom and the WC were clean, amazingly.

how can this be legal?

R69 the place has a toilet the OP lied.

2K for that ugly tiny dump, no wonder folks leave NY.

That's not an apartment. That's a storage locker.

Just join a gym, shower and poop there every morning. I poop once every morning, usually between 6:30 and 7:30. I haven't pooped more than once per morning in almost 30 years. I think if you're eating a lot of junk fast food, you're probably getting the squirts or messy bowel movements.

Sigh.

It is fairly common for older tenement style apartments in NYC to have the shower in the kitchen and the shower is not always this nice.

Funny enough, I have stayed at luxury hotels (a W, and a Morgans chain, IIRC) that had spa-style tubs in the bedroom area, which I thought was pretty bizarre, but they obviously thought was chic

What do you do, R62, when your gym has closed?

R61 yes that is what we did in the East Village in the 80s.

Thank you r22. No apartment without a toilet is legal.

In the early aughts, I had a studio apartment on the UES with no toilet. I had a spacious two rooms overlooking the back garden in an old brownstone. The toliet was in the hall. Hey, it was NYC, I was young, you make it work, then you move on.

This could devolve into a Gail Grinds situation very quickly.

R3 But it is the ultimate set up for multi tasking when getting ready. You can eat, shower, have your morning coffee, etc. all at the same time, saving you loads of time. And if you need something, you can just reach out of the shower and grab it out of the cabinet and continue to shower away. Looks lovely.

R19 Eeewww, that’s gross

It’s in Brooklyn! Not even Manhattan!! Wtf? I hope COVID destroys these insane rentals.

My first Manhattan apartment was a top-floor brownstone walk-up studio that had been very cheaply carved out of an original large bedroom, probably back around WWII. The tiny bathroom had a toilet and stall shower, but no sink. The only sink was in the 'kitchen' - a closet-sized alcove with a 1940s half-fridge that had an ancient gas stove on top, and next to that a single small sink that served for all purposes.

It was $125 a month, back in 1972, and I only lasted the one year of my lease. before finding something better. The building is still there, though, and looks as though they still haven't driven a single nail into upgrading it. I imagine that tiny studio is in the same condition, but shudder at what the rent must be today.

R82 I bet it’s more than $781 (adjusted for inflation)

I lived for 9 years in an apartment on the Upper East Side that was almost exactly like the one pictured. It had a small room with just the toilet (WC) that I got to through the bedroom, it was originally accessed from the hallway and shared with 2 apartments. The shower with had a been a bathtub was in the kitchen just like in these photos. My neighbor across the hall from me still had to go out into the hall to get to her toilet and we were on the ground floor, so anyone coming in could see her making the track to her toilet.

Now I live in glorious luxury, with 2 full bathrooms, no more showering in the kitchen or brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink.

An updated Candid Camera bit on the one I remembered.

What’s the problem r50? These is a double sink!

There are still plenty of old tenement apartments scattered around NYC with toilets, sinks, baths in odd places. Lower East Side, East Village, West Village, Yorkville, Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, etc...

One main reason why these units existed or exist is New York's rent regulation laws. People moved in 20, 30, 40, or more years ago and never left. That and or rents were so low that owner never bothered upgrading because he couldn't make that money back with higher rent.

For decade or so when laws were changed that allowed landlords to raise rents on renovated apartments, many of those old units that became vacated got much needed work and upgrades. Since as of last year this is no longer allowed, believe things will swing back the other way.

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[quote] Just join a gym, shower and poop there every morning. I poop once every morning, usually between 6:30 and 7:30.

But now that everything is closed down, it is much more difficult to find a place to do the number two if you are homeless or live with out a toilet

I'm in a rent controlled apartment in LA and I continue to work during the pandemic while others around me are not.

I feel like a millionaire.

take the drain off the shower and get and use a " shower shot" and wisk it away with the hose. No fuss no muss

Apartment in R87 after renovation.

Place was large enough so that a proper bathroom (complete with toilet) could be installed.

R67, with the rents in Portland, the one you just described would probably rent for 1400/a month before Covid.

Communal toilets in the age of Covd-19, no way. You'd have to be a fool... not a desperate one, but a plain, dumb ass fool to rent an apartment with no private toilet.

R92 thanks for the update on that place. Kind of a pity that

1) the city couldn't have bought the building and preserved that as a museum about the average folk in NYC in 20th century. Why do we only have period rooms in the MET? Hmmm?

2) the bastard landlord might have improved it a bit for the poor woman who lived there, knowing she was going to die in not so very many years, and he was going to do this eventually.

I loved the detail that she had very old fashioned gas filled light bulbs and when they finally burnt out, she just used candles. And never burned down the block!

R85 I didn’t find it funny but the first guy is hot

R95 - if you read the second linked article at R88 it stated the new landlord pleaded with her to upgrade the heat / hot water and she refused - saying her rent didn’t justify him making any improvements. He did anyway. She never turned them on.

wow, OK.

R93 I don’t know if that area is gentrified now. I didn’t go back there no more after I left. My friend and me we used to shoot up dope and that place it’s got bad memories. I think he got the bug in the 80s and died. Almost everyone I knew there is dead. It would be like goin back to an apartment full of ghosts.

Only if the landlord supplied a chamber pot / thunder mug and a maidservant to cleanse it.

I once hired a Massage Whore who Whored out of where he lived. I knew the apartment building, it was a nice Spanish-looking place that was probably built in the 30s. He met me at the door, led me to the "garden level" and through a narrow hallway past the laundry room and small storage closets toward the back of the building. We passed this tiny bathroom on the way.

He opened up a door at the end of the hallway and led me in. He fucking lived in a converted storage space that was probably 15 x 15 it was CRAMMED with his bed in one corner, a small bookshelf in another corner, a sofa along the wall to the right and a credenza on the left with a giant flat screen tv. No refrigerator, no sink, no bathroom or shower. The massage table was planted in the center of the mess.

I hire Massage Whores all the time and a couple of them have been sketchy but this one was beyond anything I expected when I walked in. I had my backpack with me and I stashed my wallet inside of it when he wasn't looking and I've never felt like I've had to do that before.

He was "straight" and mentioned his daughter about 15 times and got fucked up on pot and gave me a shitty massage, a happy ending would have been an extra on top of his Massage Whore fee. He reached out about a month later asking if I was thinking about hiring him again. I blocked him and burned sage and swam in holy water.

This one looks like that apartment Joey and Chandler tried to get Ross to move into when he was living with them and they wanted to get rid of him.

R21 OMG, that is so true. So classic NYC. Nobody gives a shit anymore, literally.

R22 You’ve got to be fuck’n kidding me - $1850/month for that POS apartment. NYC sucks the big one.

R33 Oh that’s vile

R41 For several decades it was all gay, but in the late 80s that started to change with the arrival of straight women.

Straight women ruin everything

R95

We already have one tenement museum here in NYC, don't need another. It isn't that far from this Greenwich Village apartment either....

I bet it has roaches and rats, though.

If you're into Jewish guys, the LL from R87 isn't bad looking.

Thing is today with new rent regulated laws LLs can no longer gut renovate these old apartments, jack up the rent and get them out of RS system. They can renovate but the upside is capped....

Now we're back to the 1970's or 1980's LL's are warehousing rent stabilized apartments with below or well under market rate rents. Only friends or those who otherwise are in loop remotely have a shot.

R98

Guess because Ms. O'Grady was born and came up in a time when mod cons like indoor plumbing, ranges, central heating, etc... were the exception rather than rule, she learned not to want what she hadn't got.

That place was a hovel, cannot believe any sane person would choose to live that way, especially when LL offered to make upgrades free of charge.

Can see the lure of that Greenwich Village location and all, but there are limits.

[quote] Guess because Ms. O'Grady was born and came up in a time when mod cons like indoor plumbing, ranges, central heating, etc... were the exception rather than rule, she learned not to want what she hadn't got.

Or, she was simply a nut.

There is some kind of mental illness in people who cling to the NYC area, as if monsters lie outside its borders.

OP is an ass. He knew there was a toilet.

R108 thanks for the link. The Tenement site now has a pretty interesting virtual exhibit on pandemics and housing. Maybe people could give it a look rather than posting stupidities about this apartment not having a toilet in 2020. IT HAS A SHITTER.

R112

Think about it, where was Ms. O'Grady going to go? Unless she moved across country and in with her sister any place else would have cost more, far more than what she was paying for that hovel in Greenwich Village.

The woman manged to live an active independent life right up until mowed down by that car, for an 80+ old woman that says something.

Live here, 👇🏽, with lots more, for a lot less!!!

The Bronx rocks!

Miss OGrady died at 84 and was fatally struck by a car. Hmmmmm....

R116 Yes but to not even use the heat and hot water after her landlord installed it is just being a nut.

R120

She managed very well without either for > 50 years...

Recall reading an article about how a once rural part of a local area finally got hooked up to water, sewer, electricity and gas. Homes got new heating and hot water systems installed as part of the deal. One elderly woman decided to take a hot bath for first time in her life. Sadly she filled the tub with all hot water from taps, got in an at once scaled herself to death......

Ms. O'Grady was born and raised in an other era. From a time when people had their pride and often refused "taking" anything including things that had a whiff of charity, even if that was in their own minds. The woman wasn't stupid, she knew very well what rents were in that area and likely counted herself blessed that her rent was a pittance. She didn't use heat or hot water after installed because under terms of NYS/NYC rent laws she didn't pay a monthly bill, her landlord would each month.

Rent control is an odd thing; there often aren't any leases and things are frozen in time from when tenant moved in. Landlords cannot charge for services that aren't included in lease, and since (again) RC units often don't have leases that LL couldn't charge Ms. Grady for the upgrades much less fuel if he wanted to do so.

R121 I guess it was just her mindset.

If I got to live in a rent-controlled property for 50+ years, I would consider that as government mandated charity, especially if it was an individual landlord and not a corporation. In college an elderly couple generously offered me their garage apartment for much less than they could have gotten. I only stayed there for a semester, but I had to constantly do little errands and things for them, even though they never asked me to, because I felt guilty for cheating them out of the money they could have been getting. But if they had wanted to make improvements to their property, especially one that would improve my life, I wouldn't have stopped them or refused to use the amenity.

It is like the people who say they would never accept charity, but have no problem taking government assistance. Charity is charity, regardless of whom is giving or mandating it.

So she was hit by a car and then the landlord could get $5k a month? Hmmm 🤔

Was Bruce Jenner driving the car?

At a low (but liberating) time in my life, I lived in an SRO near W. 96th Street that had a shared bathroom down the hall. It was annoying timing getting ready for work in the morning.

But then it was onward and upward - -

If the apartment has a communal toilet down the hall, I recommend watching Roman Polanski's THE TENANT first.

When I first moved to NYC in 1989, I had a tiny, 5th floor walk-up "one bedroom" on 11th Street between Avenue B and C. It had a cheap plastic camping-style shower installed in the kitchen next to the sink. And there was a toilet in a broom closet-sized thing off of the "living room," that at least had a real door that shut all the way.

My window views were: a dingy air shaft in the front, and in the back off the fire escape, an enclosed courtyard lot which was full of rusting dead cars, junk, weeds and rats (thank god I was so high up). The place defined the term "dump."

Rent was $390 a month. I was 22 and it was NYC in 1989, so I was NEVER home. Lived there one year, with very few possessions. I loved it!

[Quote]I know a guy in the E Village who has a claw foot tub in the kitchen, it’s rent stabilized on top of a 6 storey walk up and the landlord is trying to get rid of him in order to sell the building to NYU. Anyway, only has a handshower, he kneels in the tub to wash himself. His commode is in what appears to have been a tiny broom closet, there’s no sink and no window. I imagine when he shits the whole apartment must stink, he washes his hands in the kitchen sink.

Tell your friend, whatever he does, do not leave that apartment. Depending on how eager the landlord is to sell, your friend could get up to $1 million. If he does leave, he should try and negotiate a buyout before he lets the landlord know he's leaving. My landlord offered me $85K years ago to leave. I'm waiting it out until I'm the last rent stabilized apartment in the building.

R17 I had a friend who lived in an apartment like that, rent stabilized NY is whole a whole other animal.

I saw this in the papers about a week ago, the rent was less than $2k and it was rented after a few days lol.

I used to live in a building and my neighbor had the only rent stabilized apt in the building. It looked like something out of R87's link. All the other apartments were modern except hers. By law they only had to keep the electrical and plumbing upgraded in her apartment. She was only paying something like $200 a month

R131

To best of my knowledge that is not correct. A landlord only has to "upgrade" electric wiring in an apartment when other major work is being done that involves said service. For instance a huge amount of NYC apartments still have fuse boxes; so when they are gut renovated circuit breaker boxes are installed.

As for plumbing again don't think so; in multifamily housing things are what they are. Yes, leaks and or damaged pipes are fixed (hopefully), but otherwise actual pipes in walls aren't touched.

What can happen is during course of gut renovation or other major work such as installing shower/bath in those old tenement apartments where they didn't exist previously. That involves tapping into whatever hot and cold water supplies exist, along with connecting to drain pipes. Ditto for installing a toilet in those old apartments where they didn't have previously. All this explains why places like unit shown in OP have plumbing and bathroom fixtures in odd places.

Balance of post is correct; you can always tell rent regulated apartments from market rate in NYC. For most part many rent controlled or rent stabilized apartments look like who did it and ran. Literally nothing has been done to them in two or more decades besides perhaps slapping a coat of paint on walls every three years. That's only because law requires, and even then only if tenant requests.

By law one of the ways to increase legal rent for rent regulated apartments was if major work was done on apartment. Tenants already paying what they felt was too much rent didn't or don't want it to go up more by requesting things that don't fall under repairs. There are tons of NYC apartments including in Manhattan with kitchens and bathrooms from not just 1960's, but going back decades. If tenancy hasn't changed in all those years, then it's pretty much a given no major work as been done either.

Here's the kicker; though 1980's or so landlords of RS apartments often didn't give a rat's behind if tenants did major renovation or whatever work to their apartments. It saved them money (because they certainly weren't going to to do the work), and it increased value. This mind you was totally against lease, but it went on anyway because LLs again didn't care.

People put in new kitchens, bathrooms, etc... made quite a nice home for themselves and or family all while paying relatively low rent. All this came to an end when LL's started getting greedy.

What got a free pass previously got tenants hauled into housing court and in many cases evicted because they couldn't cure the defect enough to satisfy LL and court.

Told you so!

Another apartment with bathtub in sink.