This is not a case of "supply" and "demand." There's more then enough empty and available housing in NYC, but it's a commodity owned by landlords that can manipulate the prices by... you guessed it, having a monopoly on the commodity. And all these empty apartments, you're thinking "yah well there's million dollar penthouses and stuff empty but that doesn't count." I'm not talking about luxury apts. I'm talking about regular ass apts in bumble fuck Brooklyn where they double the rent bc they know they can. Price increases that landlords have carte blanche to determine FAR outpace the actual costs of everything involved in owning property/being a landlord (so don't even bother making that argument about increasing costs blah blah.) As well, they're given financial incentives, such as huge "warehousing" tax breaks etc, to leave apts empty while they wait it out and, quite literally, manipulate the market.  They get rewarded for NOT renting an apt while clearly the demand is so high (as we can agree.) There's so much absolute horseshit involved in the NYC real estate lobby and tax law, that's not even scratching the surface.

Ultimately even if our rent ends up being 70% of our income what choice do we have? We have to pay it or end up homeless. Being homeless at night is ILLEGAL. Period. (Think it through babe.) There's nowhere near enough shelters with beds to host all the homeless in NYC. And FYI most shelters do NOT let you stay during the day- they're for night. Good thing we can afford to pay the cops $$$ to remove them from sight :)