A $1,250 2 bedroom in NYC? Here’s why it’s been empty for 16 months.

GOTHAMIST—The two-bedroom apartment on Tiebout Avenue in the Bronx boasts a remodeled kitchen, polished hardwood floors, new plumbing and new electrical systems. It’s a fourth-floor walkup, but the monthly rent is just $1,250.85, and the unit is reserved for families earning no more than $101,000 a year.

Yet, the renovated apartment has been sitting empty since September 2023. The owner, a nonprofit development corporation called University Neighborhood Housing Program, is desperate to rent it to a family, but its leaders say the city’s bureaucratic rules have kept them from doing that for nearly a year-and-a-half.

“It’s infuriating,” said Brendan Mitchell, University Neighborhood Housing Program’s director of real estate. “It goes against everything we believe in to have vacant units sitting there throughout a housing crisis while people we are serving are just dying to get into an apartment in the neighborhood.”

Read the full article here.