Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin How Allia Mohamed Built Openigloo About this episode Allia Mohamed is the co-founder and CEO of Openigloo, a platform that connects renters with highly-rated landlords and enables renters to review and research their landlords. With OpenIgloo, Allia’s mission is to bring transparency to rental markets and support tenants throughout their housing journey. Motivated by her own frustrating experiences navigating opaque landlord practices and unpredictable living conditions, she launched OpenIgloo to give renters a voice and access to trustworthy, crowdsourced information about buildings and property owners. Since its launch, OpenIgloo has grown into a trusted resource for renters seeking honest reviews and insights before signing a lease. Allia Mohamed brings a decade of experience from working in finance, venture capital, and consulting. Prior to founding Openigloo, Mohamed served as a VC investor where she managed a startup portfolio as an advisor and board member. She holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Commerce from Dalhousie University
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Transcript 9,551 words · 16 speakers
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1:36 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Renting an apartment in any city can be a stressful and daunting situation, but nowhere more so than New York. My guest today is the creator of a platform that makes the process of finding both quality apartments and landlords easier. Aliyah Mohammed created Open Igloo after navigating her own frustrations with the rental market. Born in Canada, Mohammed spent nearly a decade working in international finance, venture capital, and consulting.
2:16 Alec Baldwin? She would eventually leave finance for the startup world and chose a cause close to home. With Open Igloo, Mohammed hopes to bring transparency to rental markets by combining open source city data with feedback and reviews directly from tenants. As of this year, 2026 Open Igloo has supported more than 3 million New York City renters. I wanted to know how Open Igloo gained such a large following since its launch in 2020.
2:48 Speaker 04 They find us on social media. They hear about us through friends and family and sometimes on podcasts and on radio shows.
2:57 Alec Baldwin? Hopefully. But when they come to you, is it a fee they pay now? I was told that there's... Was there a fee from the beginning? And now there wasn't, and now there is? You've grown so much, you need to charge them a fee?
3:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, so we support renters all across the five boroughs in researching buildings and landlords they're considering and searching for quality apartments. So we don't charge renters when they search for an apartment on our platform. The way that we monetize is we build partnerships with quality and reputable owners. And when we send them renters to their door and a lease gets signed, that's how we get compensated.
3:29 Alec Baldwin? Owners of the buildings?
3:30 Speaker 04 Exactly.
3:31 Alec Baldwin? And how did the owners of the buildings react at first when you went to them and told them what it was you had up your sleeve?
3:36 Speaker 04 It's a great question. So at the beginning, they were definitely cautious about what we were building. So we built a platform that allows renters to read and share reviews about their rental experiences. We coupled that with city data, so we give renters access to are there any open violations in this building? Any litigation history? Any eviction history? So landlords were, you know, a little bit cautious, but what we've done is we built a community of landlords that are really supportive of this transparency. Because landlords who take their businesses seriously understand that renters knowing the good, bad, and ugly before they sign a one-year lease-
4:11 Alec Baldwin? It's good for them.
4:12 Speaker 04 ...is really, really important. I mean, I'll give you a small example. There was an apartment above a bodega that turns into a nightclub every single night until 4:00 in the morning. Why would a landlord want a tenant to move in not having access to that information, right? That's not going to be a good, a good starting point for the relationship. So that's really what we're after, is bringing these two sides together and giving them access to information.
4:34 Alec Baldwin? Now, when you have the owners of the buildings... And there was the ones that didn't want to participate in your program. They don't want to cooperate in any way. That led me to think, among other things, of what's the number one complaint that renters have in New York about the buildings they rent? I'm going to assume it's heat.
4:51 Speaker 04 Heat is a huge one, especially in the weather that we're having in New York City right now.
4:56 Alec Baldwin? Record weather.
4:57 Speaker 04 Exactly. Seventy percent of buildings in New York City rely on the landlord to turn on the heat. We also have really old housing stock in New York City, so we're using steamed radiators that haven't been maintained in, you know, in decades. So this is a real challenge, that even if the heat is working in the building, your apartment might feel like a sauna, right? It's 100 degrees in your apartment. So definitely, heat is a number one complaint amongst renters.
5:18 Alec Baldwin? Now, when, I would assume that New Yorkers, or the political consciousness of New Yorkers as it's expressed during elections and what the candidates say, they care deeply about housing and the lack thereof. Would you say that that's true?
5:31 Speaker 04 Hundred percent.
5:32 Alec Baldwin? New Yorkers want us to do something about the housing situation, and not just the ones who need it, affordable housing.
5:36 Speaker 04 Exactly. There are five and a half million renters in New York City. Sixty-five percent of the city rents their home, and there just simply isn't enough housing. And then you also look at the affordability of the housing that does exist. Thirty percent of New York City renters, the majority of New York City renters, spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Another 30% of New York City renters spend over 50% of their income on rent. So this is considered a very severely rent-burdened city, and it needs to be a holistic solution that includes building housing, but also smart policy that's going to keep renters housed in the long run.
6:13 Alec Baldwin? Are you heartened by Mam Donnie becoming the mayor?
6:16 Speaker 04 You know, I'm excited that he really focused on housing affordability as a pillar of his campaign, and he really spoke to the hearts of New Yorkers, which is, this is something we're struggling with every single month when we write that rent check, and I'm excited that he seems to be really focused on solving this problem.
6:34 Alec Baldwin? I remember when I was young, I would come into New York and we would get the Village Voice, there was no internet, and look for ass in the real estate market.
6:42 Speaker 04 Yep.
6:43 Alec Baldwin? Go to the apartment, stand in line, the line's a block long, I'll never forget, I'm on like Bleecker Street, I walk into the studio, and all the walls are peeling off, the plaster's peeling, you can see the lath.
6:54 Speaker 04 Probably lead paint.
6:56 Alec Baldwin? You can see the lath inside, the wood framing inside the walls, everything, the paint is peeling, the thing is a mess, and there's like a box, a wooden box, a resemble a steam trunk, but then you look closer, there was drawers there, they just had the frame, unpainted.
7:10 Speaker 04 Yep.
7:10 Alec Baldwin? And you put a mattress on top, I guess, or some piece of foam, and I woke up to the guy, and they wanted like, back then, they wanted some, you know, I don't remember, but it was like, let's say it's $1,500.
7:20 Speaker 04 Yep.
7:20 Alec Baldwin? For something that should have cost half that. I look at the guy, because it's the neighborhood, obviously, there's a line of people, and I say to the guy, "You gotta be kidding me." I looked him right in the face, "You're charging $1,500 for this?" He goes, "You come back at four o'clock, it'll be gone." And that was the reality of it, I learned right away.
7:36 Speaker 04 Yep.
7:37 Alec Baldwin? Your apartment, how did you find your apartment?
7:39 Speaker 04 I found my apartment by standing outside of the building, waiting for people walking in and out, asking them if they liked the building. So my New York City renter story, not as exciting as yours, but I lived in apartments that were not well-maintained, landlords that never picked up the phone when something went wrong. So whenever I would apartment hunt, I wanted to do more research. I would just stand outside of buildings, I would wait for people walking in and out, saying, "Do you live here? How's the landlord? Should I move in?" And I got a lot of really valuable information from doing that, and that's ultimately how I found my apartment. I got good reviews from the people that were walking out, and this was really the lightbulb moment to start opening glue, which is, can we build a platform to crowdsource this rental feedback, couple it with city data, and give renters their own background check on a building
8:24 Speaker 04 and landlord, in the same way that renters have to put together a 100-page application to get an apartment in New York City. So that's how I found my apartment. It's rent stabilized, it's in Brooklyn, I've lived there for many years, and don't have plans to leave anytime soon.
8:37 Alec Baldwin? Where are they doing it better? What city are they doing it better? Because you hear about housing crises all over, particularly San Francisco because of the tech world and pricing, all that housing. Where's a city that you think is getting it more right than wrong?
8:50 Speaker 04 Oh, my goodness. It's a great, it's a great question. And I think that New York is not unique in being a city that struggles with their housing. You look at San Francisco, you look at LA, you even look at Miami that had a lot of influx of, of new, new renters during COVID. This is a global issue with metropolitan cities. Even if you look at case studies in Europe, which, you know, in Vienna or Berlin or even Paris, cities that have really strong rent regulation, they're also struggling to keep up with the population growth and, and grow the housing stock. So I think this is something that's really universal. It's the medium and smaller cities that are, that are doing better, like a Boston or a DC.
9:30 Alec Baldwin? How's Toronto?
9:32 Speaker 04 Toronto also is, is having a lot of challenges. A lot of their housing stock is new, brand new condos, luxury condos where rents are just too expensive and your average working class family can't even afford to move into the new housing that's being constructed. So this is, this is definitely a global issue across the gambit.
9:51 Alec Baldwin? I see those huge buildings on the south end of the park. I see those enormous pencil-like buildings they put up in recent years. They're the ugliest buildings I've ever seen in New York.
10:02 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. And they have their own construction issues. There was the story of the, the matchstick building on Park Avenue where the garbage chute, the garbage.
10:09 Alec Baldwin? Terminal velocity.
10:10 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly. It was just exploding and, and, you know, people spent tens of millions of dollars on, on those apartments, so.
10:16 Alec Baldwin? One thing that comes to mind is I hear maybe just in my head, the wording of people who are opposed to the work you do. They're totally market driven and they're going to sit there and say, why does New York owe everybody a place to live here? Like, once we reach where we are and there's a, I mean, I'm all for rent control and rent stabilization, this, but this idea that we owe everybody a house, why don't they just go somewhere else? There's no room. It's done. It's filled up for now. And unless they build other things, what do you say to them?
10:45 Speaker 04 You know, I have a very firm belief that there are some things that are human rights, and housing is one of them. And housing is something that permeates into all aspects of our society. If people do not have stable housing, they're not going to have access to education, they're not going to have access to economic opportunity. Housing is really the foundation to living in a successful society. And you'll talk to some of these free-market capitalists that also share that belief, that you should not be able to charge whatever you want on housing, education, or healthcare. These are things that are extremely sacred, that need to have some sort of regulation. New York City has always been a place where people want to live, that people move from all over the world, and
11:29 Speaker 04 we need to make sure that we are accommodating the spirit and culture and the history of New York City.
11:35 Alec Baldwin? You function, I'm sure, the fees that are paid to you by your clients, if you will. That doesn't cover all the costs, correct?
11:41 Speaker 04 Correct.
11:42 Alec Baldwin? You get funding from where?
11:44 Speaker 04 We do. We're a venture-backed startup.
11:45 Alec Baldwin? Right. And where does the money come from?
11:47 Speaker 04 So, we have monetization models, but we also have venture capital investors that also believe in this mission of rental transparency that has provided funding to us.
11:56 Alec Baldwin? You did a lot of things in your career-
11:59 Speaker 04 Yes.
12:00 Alec Baldwin? -before you did this. And I'm assuming you did fairly well, you win all this money. My friends who do finance, or whatever it is, doesn't matter, arbitrageur, anything, I just call them, they're in money, I say.
12:11 Speaker 04 Yes.
12:12 Alec Baldwin? To just make my life simpler, because I can't keep track of all these different offshoots. But you did that. Do you miss it, or do you still do it? Are you still an entrepreneur in the way that you were before Openigloo?
12:20 Speaker 04 I am an entrepreneur, full-time, with Openigloo, and I do miss my prior stints. I worked in banking, I worked in venture capital, investing in startups, working on a trading floor. My first job out of college was working in Wall Street. That's what brought me to New York City to begin with. And there's something fun about the pace, and also just the learning, right? When you work in that type of environment, you're reading the news, you're reading about what's going on in all corners-
12:47 Alec Baldwin? I have to.
12:48 Speaker 04 -all corners of the world. And I loved that about the job. But I do that now in my work with Openigloo. I love staying on Top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is going on in the housing space, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. What we're seeing now, just a few years into building Openigloo, is that landlords are changing their behavior. They're actually taking care of their buildings because they're realizing that the transparency that we're putting and the spotlight we're putting on them means they're losing clients. They're not signing leases as fast as they once were because renters are looking at the reviews and saying, "Well, I don't want to pay $4,000 a month to live here. You don't take care of your renters that you have right
13:33 Speaker 04 now." So we're starting to see that impact, and that's really what I'm excited to continue to focus on.
13:39 Alec Baldwin? Not in all things, but I tend to view, when I was reading about you and your work, I tend to view it like other things where you're doing jobs the government ought to be doing. You're providing a service and you're providing a reality to people that is a business the government might have been in, to provide transparency and so forth.
13:56 Speaker 04 Transparency and also informing renters about their rights. So rent stabilization is a big policy that impacts millions of New Yorkers. There's nearly a million rent-stabilized apartments. And we ask renters, when they're reviewing their landlords and buildings, "Do you live in a stabilized apartment?" Yes, no, not sure. 35% of our users check "not sure." And that breaks my heart. That means that there are hundreds of thousands of renters who probably live in a stabilized apartment and don't even know it. And having this type of protection means your rent increases are limited and you are entitled to a renewal. The landlord cannot ask you to leave. So, big mission at Openigloo has been sharing this information.
14:36 Alec Baldwin? They didn't even know.
14:37 Speaker 04 Trying to get the word out.
14:37 Alec Baldwin? I find that hard to believe.
14:38 Speaker 04 Absolutely. It's devastating. When you think about the old-school New Yorkers, and we all know one or two of them, that are living in a $500 rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, those are because those renters knew their rights.
14:51 Alec Baldwin? Right.
14:51 Speaker 04 And they stayed in that apartment for their entire lives. And as a result, they're able to stay and live in the city comfortably. And I want to make sure as many renters know about those rights as possible.
15:04 Alec Baldwin? Open Igloo co-founder and CEO Alia Mohammed. If you enjoy conversations about the heart of New York City, check out my episode with WNYC's Brian Lehrer.
15:16 Speaker 05 People have said to me, "Oh, your show is the opposite of Rush Limbaugh." And it's not because he's conservative and I'm liberal, it's because he makes no secret about the show is about what he thinks. For me, I have opinions, I sometimes state my opinions, or I sometimes frame questions in a leading way that suggests an opinion, but the show is not about what I think. So if I'm expressing a point of view, which I'm allowed to do on the show, but if I do express an opinion, it's in the context of, "Okay, this is what I think. Now, everybody else who agrees or disagrees, come on in and let's have a meaningful conversation about it."
16:01 Alec Baldwin? To hear more of my conversation with Brian Lehrer, go to hearsthething.org. After the break, Alia discusses her hopes for New York City housing plans under Mayor Mamdani.
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20:10 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. As the affordable housing crisis swells across the United States, New York City leads the way with its unaffordable market for renters. The newly-elected Mayor Zoran Mamdani aims to freeze the rents on the 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. As the terms are often conflated, I wanted Aliya Mohammed to explain the difference between rent-controlled and rent-stabilized.
20:41 Speaker 04 So, rent-stabilized is typically buildings that were built before 1974 that have six or more units. And rent-controlled are very specific units that were built before 1947, where there are— I might get the years wrong one or two—but built before 1947 where there has been a continuous tenant since 1971. So if you've lived in your apartment since 1971 and the building was built before 1947, you might have a rent-controlled apartment. Now, there's only about 16,000 rent-controlled apartments left in New York City, and that's because when that continuous tenant, who most likely passes away, that rent-controlled apartment converts into a rent-stabilized apartment.
21:25 Speaker 04 So that's just a different regulation status, but they have many of the similar protections. But the rent-controlled apartments are going to be those $80 apartments, you know, in Manhattan. And the rent-stabilized apartments are not necessarily affordable, and I think this is a common myth in New York City as well.
21:40 Alec Baldwin? How so?
21:41 Speaker 04 So rent-stabilized is just giving you protections against really crazy rent increases, and it protects you against the landlord saying, "Oh, I'm not renewing you, you have to leave." That's all rent stabilization does, but it— Doesn't mean affordable. The most expensive rent stabilized apartment on record is $50,000.
21:57 Alec Baldwin? A month.
21:58 Speaker 04 Per month. And that is because over the years, there have been these tax abatement programs, for example, where developers build a building, they don't have to pay property taxes for 30 or 40 years if they make the building rent stabilized. So it's still very common that you will see, you know, these units in Hudson Yards that are rent stabilized, but you do have those protections against large rent increases.
22:19 Alec Baldwin? Now, many, many people come in, I'm talking about the mayor's race and Mamdani, and they come in and they have a lot of hopes and they advertise a lot about what they intend to do. What do you think that's achievable for Mamdani? What would you like to see him do?
22:33 Speaker 04 I would love to see his plan of building 200,000 affordable units in New York City.
22:38 Alec Baldwin? Where would they go?
22:39 Speaker 04 All across the five boroughs. No neighborhood is going to be immune from getting affordable units built. And this has been one of the biggest debates in New York City. Oh, we don't want an affordable housing unit building in Soho. We don't want affordable housing built on the Upper West Side. We really need to come together as a community.
22:56 Alec Baldwin? Isn't there a lot of affordable housing on the Upper West Side now as it is? There's a lot of housing authority. I lived in, I used to live in the Eldorado.
23:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:03 Alec Baldwin? For 20 years in that West 90s area, there was a lot of public housing.
23:08 Speaker 04 There is, but there's not enough. When you look at how the city has grown and the vacancy rate in New York City is sub 2%, there's not enough housing. So I would like to see those 200,000 units built all across the city in the places where it's going to have the most impact, right? Now, there's challenges. You need to make sure if you build those homes, there's infrastructure to support it, schools, transportation, all of those things. But if he can really execute on this vision, the city's going to be in a much better place than when it started.
23:37 Alec Baldwin? You look at the city and you say, going across all five boroughs, and I'm assuming there are some watchdogs, groups like your own, similar, where the mission is to locate where more likely could that go? You either have to identify a insignificant amount of open land that's there to build houses on within reason. Or you're going to tear something down. When Columbia decided to expand their campus and they went and bought all these muffler shops or whatever was up there adjacent to them and ripped everything down, ripped down like a whole block.
24:09 Speaker 04 Yep.
24:09 Alec Baldwin? And they're going to do like the wall and have more wall and everything on their campus, their private campus. Where do you think the housing can be built quickest?
24:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a great question, even, you know, to your comment about Columbia. They have a very dark history when it comes to their expansion and displacing communities. I think we need to be really intentional that if we're going to be aggressive with this plan to build housing, it needs to make sure it's taking into consideration the wants of the community. Give you an example, in Bed-Stuy, there was a project to build an affordable housing building in a parking lot beside a church. And there were protests and people were upset about this. How could you build this beside the church? We weren't tearing down the church or anything like that. This was a vacant parking lot that hadn't been used. And there are places like that all across the city. My friends and family hate me because every time we're walking somewhere in New York, I'm like, that could be housing, that could be housing, this could be housing. It's abandoned parking lots, even in Manhattan.
25:04 Speaker 04 So I think that there's a lot of opportunities to build the housing that we need without displacing or changing, you know, the culture and facade of the neighborhoods that we hold dear.
25:14 Alec Baldwin? Who's doing that work, to your knowledge now, of identifying where the housing can go? Is there a group you work with or admire or are aware of who is citing that?
25:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, you know, city council members. There's a lot of city council members that are taking this task really seriously.
25:29 Alec Baldwin? Name one or two.
25:30 Speaker 04 Chiose, for example. He's a city council member in Bed-Stuy who was behind that project, close to the church. And I would really encourage other council members to follow suit and identify those development areas in their community and do it in a way with public input, of course, but with a sense of urgency. Because we don't have five years to just argue and debate what color the brick should be. We need housing yesterday.
25:55 Alec Baldwin? Well, in that way, that real estate is always someone's equity. There's a town I work in, in a film festival culture, and there's a movie theater there, which does OK in the captive summer months. This is out on Long Island. The guy that owns the theater, he's never going to sell it to us, never. We've begged him, we've gotten people with a lot of money, some rich sponsors of our activities. We thought we could work it out, had a number that made sense for everybody, but it didn't matter what the number was. And you always realize that there are people out there, a huge number of them, who are never selling their land or their property. This is of a value that is only going to go up. Is that a problem you come up with in New York?
26:34 Speaker 04 You know, it's a good point. With the theater example, real estate is emotional in New York City. It is emotional. And anybody who's bought or sold a home knows this. People think their houses are worth way more than it actually is because of the childhood memories you have from that. It's just not true. I would say, in New York City, you do see a lot of buildings change hands. I don't think you have the same stubbornness when it comes to real estate, because it is a business, but the investors that have done the best are the ones that have bought and held and never sold. And this is where you see the most success in New York City, real estate portfolios. You bought a couple buildings in the 50s, bought a couple buildings in the 60s, and you kept just building the portfolio. So maybe there is a little bit of stubbornness, but the buildings in New York City are already residential units, right?
27:18 Speaker 04 So you don't have this, you know, the garage owner won't sell because we want to build housing. I don't think that's true. I think a lot of those businesses, they do end up selling to developers and getting those buildings built.
27:31 Alec Baldwin? Co-founder and CEO of Open Igloo, Aliyah Mohammed. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend, and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Mohammed tells us how to find a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City.
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32:04 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. When Open Igloo first began in 2020, its primary goal was to bring transparency to the New York City rental market. Like Yelp for renters, Open Igloo provides a platform for tenants to review their landlords and buildings. By 2022, Open Igloo was listed as one of the top 100 apps in the App Store, and since then has grown to help millions of renters in the Five Boroughs. With such success, I was curious how Alia plans to grow Open Igloo beyond her original mission.
32:43 Speaker 04 I get asked all the time, when is Open Igloo going to expand beyond even New York City? So we started as a platform to help renters do research, and we've really evolved into a platform where people can find an apartment. And when I say that, I mean, do the research, find the apartment, schedule the tour, apply for the apartment, pay, sign, all within a digital and transparent platform. Because what we commonly hear from New York City renters is the scams. Okay, I found the apartment, I scheduled the tour, the broker ignored me, never showed up. Or I applied for the apartment, but there were 50 other applications and I didn't get it. Or there was a bidding war. Or it was a made-up scam to begin with. So these are the challenges we really want to tackle for renters and help them not just
33:26 Speaker 04 during the due diligence phase, but really throughout their entire rental journey. And not just for their first apartment, but for their second apartment and their third apartment. I think the thing that always frustrated me was, why is it so hard to get an apartment, the second apartment? I just, I already have one year of rent payment history. I'm a good tenant, everything's good. Why do I need to go through the same application system all over again? So I think if we really scale Open Igloo to make it this digital platform, we can make it a lot easier for renters all across the country.
33:55 Alec Baldwin? How much does an organization like yours... At least attempt to locate housing for people outside the five boroughs. You want to say to them, here are some things that are more affordable for you in New Jersey, in Westchester, lower Westchester. Are there areas where the city of New York could be cooperating with other cities and other states in terms of building affordable housing outside of the five boroughs?
34:20 Speaker 04 Absolutely. I mean, you've definitely seen this happen with New Jersey. A lot of New Yorkers moving to Jersey City, Hoboken, even deeper into Jersey, be definitely more affordable than New York City. But also the quality, right? You talk to anybody who lives in Hoboken, they're like, I've got a pool, and I've got a gym, and I've got a rooftop, and I'm paying $2,200 a month, which is considered cheap to your average New Yorker who pays for rent here. But I think there's definitely room to collaborate with other cities. But what I would really like to see the city focus on is the five boroughs, because there's so much work to be done here. In the outer boroughs, in the Bronx, in Staten Island, there are opportunities all across the five boroughs to build more quality, affordable housing for people who want to live here, right? And I hear this all the time, if you can't afford to move, live in New York, just go somewhere else. What about New Yorkers?
35:05 Speaker 04 What about people who were born and raised here, and their families are here, and their kids' schools are here? It's not as simple as saying, just move to New Jersey, there's $2,200 apartments over there. We really need to solve it within our own four walls.
35:17 Alec Baldwin? How does somebody find a rent stabilized apartment in New York?
35:21 Speaker 04 So, funny you ask. So you shared earlier about the Village Voice having to circle classifieds and, you know, trying to know somebody who knows somebody to get your hands on one of these apartments. This was the old way of finding rent stabilized apartments in New York City. And there is a new way that we've been really focused on at Openigloo, which is identifying where these rent stabilized-
35:40 Alec Baldwin? Could you say the word "previous" rather than "old"? So don't say, "Oh, that's the old way."
35:44 Speaker 04 Oh, that's the old way. Sorry, the former way, the previous way.
35:47 Alec Baldwin? Thank you.
35:48 Speaker 04 Yes, you're welcome. I apologize.
35:50 Alec Baldwin? No, please.
35:51 Speaker 04 So now we, you know, we really want to try and come up with a digital and transparent way of identifying these apartments. So in New York City, every single landlord is required to register their rent stabilized apartments with the state. And we've taken that data, and we've put it on Openigloo, so that you can go and you can search for, "I want two bedrooms in-" This neighborhood at this budget and I want it to be rent stabilized. And we will show you all of the units that are available that are in buildings with those stabilized apartments. There was a recent law that passed, the Rental Transparency Act, it went into effect just this month, that requires landlords to post notices in their common areas if there are rent stabilized apartments in the building. And this law was to try and help renters who are already living in the building to know if maybe they have a rent stabilized apartment and know their rights, et cetera.
36:34 Speaker 04 But it's not really that helpful to people who are apartment hunting because you don't go door to door and sort of poke your head into these vestibules. So this is one of the ways that you can find a stabilized apartment is going to opening glow.
36:43 Alec Baldwin? What's your evaluation, to the extent, as it relates to your work, as it relates to people trying to locate even remotely affordable housing, about the real estate companies in this, in this city? Do they, I mean, do real estate companies, when people go and say to them, I want to get an apartment, you say how much I have to spend? And you're like a normal, average person who wants to be able to spend 25 or 30% of your monthly income on the rent? Are they laughing in their faces now? Do the real estate community, they don't get it?
37:12 Speaker 04 Sometimes, right? You definitely have conversations with those brokers that say, oh, you're, what you're looking for is completely unrealistic. Like, I can't help you.
37:20 Alec Baldwin? It's not out there.
37:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, your budget is less than $2,000. Like, good, good luck, move, move out of state. And, you know, our answer is, yes, it is very difficult to find those cheap apartments, but it's not impossible. You need to be intentional, you need to be focused, and you need to leverage the tools that are at your disposal. Everything from our platform to the affordable housing lotteries, to, you know, staying close with your, your uncle so that you can inherit the apartment.
37:47 Alec Baldwin? When I was going to school in Washington, which was the first city I lived in when I was in DC to go to GW, and they were saying how DC was the opposite of New York, where in DC, all the wealth was in the center of town and you lived in the suburbs going outward to Bethesda and Silver Spring and so forth, and the Virginia suburbs, and that New York was the opposite of that. All the wealth is in the heart of the city and everybody who doesn't have any, that has less money and less economic opportunity live outside in the other boroughs. And I'm wondering, is there a borough you think is the most ready to be redeveloped now with affordable housing? The Bronx, perhaps?
38:23 Speaker 04 The Bronx, definitely, but that comes with a lot of challenges. So we've seen projects open up in the Bronx that aren't truly affordable. Right? You look at the area median income for some neighborhoods in the Bronx, forty, fifty thousand dollars a year, household incomes. And the apartments are being priced at thirty-one hundred, thirty-five hundred, four thousand, because these are brand-new, beautiful, luxury developments. So it's not just enough to build the housing. The Bronx got a lot of new housing over the past five years. Problem is, no one can afford to live in them. So this is something that we really need to get to the crux to. But the Bronx is a big borough, and there's a lot of development opportunities there. My fear is that if we continue to build these luxury apartments, we're not actually going to solve anything.
39:06 Alec Baldwin? Now, there are unscrupulous, obviously, landlords. I've had a couple, not many. And we hear about people who don't get their deposits back. What remedies do they have available to them?
39:18 Speaker 04 If they don't get their deposit back from their landlord? It's definitely something that happens. In New York City, we actually track data about this at Openigloo. The good thing is that seventy percent of renters report getting their complete security deposits back at the end of their lease. And it's the thirty percent that don't. And I'm sure there's a percentage of those that maybe there was something that they did break, and something should have been retained. But if a landlord unjustly keeps a security deposit, you can file a complaint with the Attorney General, or you can take them to small claims court. Within fourteen days of your move out, and this is a law in New York City, within fourteen days of your move out, the landlord has to send you an itemized receipt of why they are keeping or retaining your deposit. And if they don't send that to you, they essentially forfeit it back to you. So those are the paths to try and get it back.
40:03 Speaker 04 At Openigloo, we really want renters to do research on the landlord before they move in. Do they have a reputation for not returning security deposits? And this is data that we track and display on our platform, so that you can avoid those places and hopefully avoid a court battle.
40:16 Alec Baldwin? Are there more of them that you want to admit to, that we want to imagine, in terms of that don't give them their money back?
40:21 Speaker 04 Absolutely, yeah, definitely. It's a common practice. I'm happy that it's not as common. It's not the majority of cases. But there's definitely landlords that are notorious for never giving security deposits back. What renters will commonly do, and this is, you know, not legal, is they will use the security deposit to pay for their last month's rent. And then they don't have to deal with this, you know, potentially confrontational arrangement. I sort of have a controversial take on this, where... I tell renters, do not use your security deposit as your last month's rent.
40:50 Alec Baldwin? Why?
40:51 Speaker 04 Because there is another law that says you were supposed to earn interest on your security deposit. So if you use your security deposit to pay last month's rent, you're essentially forfeiting the interest that your security deposit earned over that however long you lived in the apartment. So that's my advice to renters is, you know, collect that interest. I know it might be little, but if you've lived somewhere for five, 10 years, it adds up.
41:13 Alec Baldwin? My first apartment in New York that I bought was a condo. And then I moved into the Eldorado. I went from a condo to a co-op.
41:19 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
41:20 Alec Baldwin? And now I'm in a building that's a condo. And I have been told by the brokers, we've dealt with and those people who've tried to make an offer for us in our building, that there's a much more of an attraction toward condos now than co-ops because a lot of people don't want to pull their pants down and show all their finances.
41:35 Speaker 04 Yep.
41:35 Alec Baldwin? And everything else, like, none of your business, you know?
41:37 Speaker 04 Exactly.
41:38 Alec Baldwin? And so my building is the Lower Fifth Avenue and all that, east of Fifth Avenue to Broadway area, near Washington Square, all that area is mostly co-ops. And the ones that are condos are thriving.
41:52 Speaker 04 Yes.
41:52 Alec Baldwin? You know, everybody wants to come and live in a condo because they don't want to deal with the board. And we've had a lot of people come down, ring our doorbell and ask us to buy our apartment.
41:59 Speaker 04 Don't get me started on the co-ops. And it's one of those things, Alec, that I tell renters, never rent in a co-op.
42:05 Alec Baldwin? Let's get you started. Go ahead.
42:06 Speaker 04 Let me start this rant. You know, co-ops are great. They're beautiful, right? Some of them are beautifully maintained. But when you're a renter in a co-op, it's difficult enough to be an owner in a co-op, right? But if you're a renter in a co-op, it's a whole different story. Why? Because you are not protected against a lot of things that renters are protected against in normal buildings. So I'll give you an example. In New York City, the maximum that a landlord can charge on a rental application is $20. Simple credit check, background check, et cetera. In a co-op, there is no cap, and condos as well. So co-ops can charge $1,000 for a rental application, $2,000. And they will. And it's essentially this way of discriminating against renters, to say, we don't like renters here. And if you can't afford the non-refundable...
42:49 Alec Baldwin? We want high-end renters.
42:49 Speaker 04 Yes. If you can't afford the non-refundable $2,000 application, we don't want you here. And I think there's something that's got to, something's got to change there. Even term limits, right? A lot of co-ops have rules that an owner can only sublet their unit for two years at a time. So as a renter, you move in, you're just kind of getting settled, you've already paid all of these fees, and two years later, you have to leave because of board rules. So I think from a renter's perspective, living and renting in a co-op is a no-no for me.
43:16 Alec Baldwin? What do you know about the air conditioning situation in New York that's coming up?
43:19 Speaker 04 I have been talking about this for years and years. So in New York City, there's a very strict heat laws, right? New York City landlords are legally obligated to make sure that their renters have working and sufficient heat because as we're seeing, winter can be dangerous and people do die in their apartments, especially vulnerable elderly New Yorkers. There's a law to propose something similar for air conditioning. Anyone that has spent a summer in New York City knows how
43:44 Alec Baldwin? I'm out of here.
43:44 Speaker 04 disgustingly hot it can be, but also dangerously hot, right? So a lot of New Yorkers, they live without air conditioning and this law would propose that landlords have those same obligations to air conditioning as they do to heat. Now, they wouldn't necessarily be obligated to pay for the air conditioning, the electrical bill, for example, from running the air conditioner, but making sure that the apartment is outfitted
44:06 Alec Baldwin? They have it.
44:06 Speaker 04 with an air conditioner. But in New York City, for example, every single summer, cooling centers open up all around the city.
44:12 Alec Baldwin? I heard about cooling buses.
44:14 Speaker 04 Yes.
44:14 Alec Baldwin? Have you heard about that?
44:15 Speaker 04 Cooling buses. They have, they're doing the same thing right now during this cold spurt, warming buses all over the city.
44:20 Alec Baldwin? They have warming buses too, yeah, that's what I heard.
44:22 Speaker 04 Warming buses. Hospitals turn into warming centers 24/7. And this is, this is crazy. It means that people live in apartments where they're not getting sufficient heat or they're not being able to stay cool and they actually have to go to one of these public buildings.
44:35 Alec Baldwin? Let's talk about the lottery.
44:36 Speaker 04 Let's talk about the lottery.
44:37 Alec Baldwin? What is your assessment of the lottery?
44:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, interesting. So, New York City has something called the Affordable Housing Lottery. So, a lot of these new construction buildings that go up, a percentage of the units need to be allocated for the Affordable Housing Lottery and they are given to New Yorkers that meet certain income restrictions, right? It's been a very successful program. There have been hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers that have been placed in these units, but it also has some criticisms, right? The time it takes to get placed. If you make even a penny more than what the band is, you don't get the apartment. Also, some of these bands are allocated to people who make $150,000, $165,000 a year, which by New York standards doesn't mean you're a very wealthy person.
45:20 Speaker 04 But it leaves a lot of questions as to why do we need an affordable housing lottery to house people that are making six figures? What about people that make lower income? So a lot of criticisms of the program. There was a recent change, for example, where a person that got placed in an affordable housing lottery, if they moved out, that unit used to have to go back into the lottery. And what would end up happening is that unit would stay empty for months and months. And they've changed the law temporarily so that people can just apply directly, first come, first serve, so we can get that that turn happen a little bit faster.
45:51 Alec Baldwin? This takes me back to the earliest days of my young days in New York. My uncle lived in his apartment, him and my father. They were from Fort Greene, the old Fort Greene. But I grew up and spent a lot of time as a child with my father's parents. And my uncle lived in Manhattan for years and got an apartment of rent, stabilized apartment, very modest rent. People don't understand that in New York, with some modest exceptions, whether it's a terrace or a community garden or whatever, then in New York, your home is pretty modest. And in California, you go out and the sun's on you and you're going to grow your tomatoes or whatever the hell. But in New York, you've got to open the door and close the door behind you when it's your home and your way. A home in New York is precious.
46:33 Alec Baldwin? And I've always been taken with that idea of, you know, you close that door and you have peace and you have security. And I think the work that you're doing is amazing. I think it's amazing.
46:43 Speaker 04 Thank you very much.
46:43 Alec Baldwin? And it's a penance for all the downtown work you did.
46:46 Speaker 04 Yes, I'm making up for my my bad past.
46:50 Alec Baldwin? Thank you so much for doing this with us.
46:52 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me. It was such an amazing conversation.
46:57 Alec Baldwin? My thanks to Open Igloos Alia Mohammed. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan-Wolner. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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