Fed up New Yorkers are taking to TikTok to lament rat-infested apartments and ridiculous rent hikes that are making living in the city impossible

• New Yorkers are lamenting rent prices on apartments they say they can no longer afford.
• The median Manhattan rent hit a record $4,100 in June, pricing out many who got a 'Covid discount.'

TikTok apartment tours took a dark turn in the summer of 2022.

As 'Covid discounts' expire — rent discounts given by desperate landlords hoping to keep tenants amid the pandemic — significant rent hikes are taking their place. According to real estate site Street Easy, rentals that were listed during the peak of the pandemic — in 2020 and 2021, are seeing an average increase of around 20% in asking price this year.

In June, the median rent in Manhattan topped $4,000 per month — breaking previous records along with every other borough in the city aside from Staten Island. Displaced renters who once cinched pandemic deals are now responsible for more than 40% of Manhattan's vacancies, in what's been heralded as the most challenging rental market in years.

Outrageous price hikes have left many New Yorkers unable to afford to stay in the city, and many have taken to TikTok to lament their untenable rent increases and the city's hyper-competitive rental market.

Nancy Wu, an economist and podcaster, shared that her landlord increased the monthly rent from $2,600 to $3,200, while Samantha Short, who works in music business development at Facebook, showed off her studio apartment that's had its price raised from $2,450 to $3,938 at her lease renewal. (Short said she's declining to renew).

The indignity of post-pandemic price increases can be especially fraught when the apartment in question is rife with problems.

Take TikToker @trina_roseee — who documented the disparity between her Brooklyn apartment's living conditions — indoor flooding, trails of dead cockroaches and rats — and her landlord's planned $800-per-month price hike. The latter is set to the tune of "it's what the apartment's worth" — the soundtrack of another viral rent increase video.

Untenable rent increases have prompted many to decamp from the city or move back to their childhood homes. In fact, more Americans are currently living in multi-generational households — largely because of "financial issues" — than they have in decades.

"Back to mom and dad's I go," TikToker Robbie Scott said in an August 23 parody response to a video on struggling 18- to 25-year-olds, "So, there goes my dream of independence that I've been waiting for for 23 f------ years. I just want my own space. I don't want to be sleeping in the same f------ bed I was sleeping in at the age of seven."

But, it's important to note that returning home is a safety net unavailable to many currently priced out of the New York rental market. Last week, more than 54,000 people were staying in NYC shelters, according to City Limits.

The problem, experts say, is one of supply and demand; more people looking for a home in New York than there are affordable homes to rent, and prices of the existing housing supply are increasing in response. The housing shortage is national, but in New York specifically, officials say housing hasn't kept pace with job growth — and for reasons that range from zoning restrictions to supply chain struggles and political logjams, construction has also lagged in comparison to other American cities.

Earlier this summer, Evan Rugen, the founder of real estate investment firm LVL Group NY, went viral for a June 5 TikTok explaining a political loophole originally created to protect tenants.

The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 prevents landlords from automatically increasing the price of a rent-controlled apartment when a tenant leaves. But according to Rugen, many landlords would prefer to keep those apartments empty, and keep affordable units off the market, with the idea that the 2019 act will soon be repealed.

"I'm usually a pretty optimistic person," Vicki L. Been, a former deputy mayor for housing and economic development who supports efforts to build housing, told The New York Times. "I would describe myself as very concerned."