It’s a question every New Yorker wonders – how much are my neighbors paying for their apartments? Post-it Notes for Neighbors is an interactive installation that helps demystify the topic by inviting people to share information about their living situation. Inspired by Illegal Art’s To Do, I covered a storefront window with Post-it notes stamped with specific fill-in-the-blank forms. Local residents and other passers-by can fill in a note with their own apartment information and marvel at the high and low numbers paid by others. By the end of the week, the window is transformed into a useful collection of housing information created by and relevant to the community. It also reflects the changing real estate values of the area. This project was part of the public art exhibit Windows Brooklyn and displayed on vintage furniture shop Yesterday’s News at 428 Court Street in Carroll Gardens (around the corner from where I used to live). Scroll down to view charts of the results!

Read my article about the process on the Urban Omnibus!
Installation assistance by Kay Cheng.
The word on the street: Gothamist, Utne, The Design Studio for Social Intervention

More images on Flickr

Results:

All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

After the week-long installation it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and 2) people responded! 151 notes out of 300 were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less – a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146/month (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720/month. Some other interesting responses about monthly rents:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs – $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr – $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs – $1000 (”w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs – $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs – $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs – $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs – $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs – $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs – $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC-area response) for 1 wk – $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs depending on the number of years people have lived in their apartment:

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. I printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now I see that I still botched the wording – most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who I met while tending to the project – one guy has lived in a two-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him a mere $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know my old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble” (agreed, ha). And a woman named Deborah bought three homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

design, NYC, public installation, public space, signs, urban planning