In my last installment of New York or Bust!, I mentioned my mission to return to New York City for my final year of college. In this installment, I will be going over my housing search. My search has truly been an epic saga. I have been researching temporary housing in New York City that is suitable for students for about 10 years now and surprisingly I have still not come to any definitive conclusions!
My search began long before I wanted to attend my current school. The housing hunt began in 2001, when I wanted to take a summer class at New York University and possibly get an internship. I didn't end up taking the class at that time since I couldn't find housing.
For the first several years of my housing research I pretty much only turned up a few possible options. These included Sara's New York Homestay, a hand full of independent homestay search websites, a few very expensive temporary corporate housing options and New York Accommodations Centre.
I read the information provided on the websites of each organization very carefully and I found that Sara's New York Homestay had reasonable rates, meal options and seemed to be what I was looking for (at least on paper it was perfect). So I did research on the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and other websites to check the reputability of this place and absolutely nothing came up!
I searched the organizations that they claimed to be members of, which were listed on their website and still no information regarding their track record or reputability. Finally, I contacted the owner to ask more questions. Well, the answer's that I received from them were a little iffy.
It ended up that the owner seemed to have a shady, corner-cutting way of doing business and it showed in their responses to my inquiry. In addition, I took to the internet message boards to ask if anyone had any experience with them but no one else had dealt with them. I did, however, receive generally helpful advice in looking for housing in the city.
Also, one interesting person responded to my inquiry and sent a link to Sara's Homestay. It was, wait for it.... none other than the owner himself, I was flabbergasted!! And another member of that message board who gave me some advice had private messaged me later and said she saw the owner's iffy response to me so she clicked the link that he gave and said she read the website and found that the name of the owner matched the name of the person who responded to me! It was beyond weird! But kudos to the lady for informing me.
From then on I knew something was up with that business. Years later I Googled them again to see if anyone has had written any reviews of their experiences with them and sure enough now every single review I find on them is very negative. But I'm not surprised at all. Here's are some links that I found on Yelp.com and InsiderPages.com that showcase the poor business practices of Sara's New York Homestay.
Needless to say that my New York City housing search had proven to be fruitless for my first few years on the hunt. But I have pressed on all these years and found some different options along the way. Stay tuned for next week's post, where I will share my other NYC housing finds. Will I successfully find housing before Fall 2011? Only time will tell.
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