 My name is Nega and welcome back to High Black Girl. It's a channel that's all about beauty and personal finance because here we are keeping it cute and securing the bag sis. So if you couldn't tell by the title of today's video, we are going to be deep diving the entire process of how you can get a rent control department in New York City. And not just any rent control department, you can get a luxury rent control department in New York City. How do I know this? Because I got one. If you haven't checked out my apartment tours, you can see them on my channel here. Hopefully with like the magic of YouTube I can put the links up. So if you're interested in learning how I got my apartment and how you, most importantly you can get your own rent control department in New York City. Keep watching and before I forget, please subscribe. It would really help me out if you can subscribe to my channel and give me a thumbs up, help me and also help the YouTube algorithm and also help, you know, other people that might be interested in getting, you know, a luxury rent control department in New York. So without further ado, let's get right into today's video. So first things first. What is a rent stabilize department? So a rent stabilize department, not government housing, two different things, but a rent stabilize apartment is just an apartment that can be anywhere, but it's protected by certain rules and regulations. So my landlord cannot increase my rent anywhere over 2% at all. And they have to give me the right to renew my lease. So I basically have this apartment in perpetuity for as long as I want. And my landlord can increase my rent more than 2% at all. There really is a great place to be just because like one, I love this building. It's a new building. And two, I have the peace of mind of knowing like when I do renew my lease, my rent is not going to go up astronomical. I'm not sure if you guys have seen, but I've been seeing it everywhere on Twitter. Like since the pandemic, can you say that on YouTube? Um, since the Panasonic ended, a lot of people's rents are going up by like $1,000 a month. It's crazy. So I just feel really blessed to have this rent stabilize apartment because that means my landlord cannot increase my rent more than 2% at any given time for any reason whatsoever. And they also can't evict me if I am consistently paying my rent on time. They have to allow me to renew my lease. So how do you get a rent stabilize apartment? It sounds great, right? Well, it's actually pretty easy. When I first moved to New York, it was super hard because the website was super janky and you had to apply by mail and then, you know, sometimes you didn't get it, they'll email you, they'd call you, blah, blah, it sucked. But now it's really easy with this new platform called Hasn't Connect 2.0. You just make a profile, give them like your income, and then it will show you all the available like rent stabilize apartments in New York. I absolutely love it. So it's super easy and I'm going to show you what it looks like right now. It's over Naked Time. Yay! I'm so excited. So you go to housingconnect.com and you simply log in and you can view all the open ladries. There's 28 of them. They're a lot. Also, pro tip, I believe that they put new apartments on here at midnight. So I would be up at midnight just seeing what apartments that I liked. But see, they're all really cool. You can kind of see what neighborhoods they're in. I would like give you a little disclaimer. A lot of the ones that say Green Point are actually in Williamsburg. So I would just double check on that. This is one I thought was really cute. You can see the income right here, clearest day, and the old one it was really hard to see. All the amenities are right here on the right hand side and whoop girl, that is a lot of them. And then here, this is also my favorite part and makes it so easy to know if you can qualify for this apartment. So for this one, they're having 80% AMI and 130% AMI and it just depends on what kind of money you make to see if you can apply for this apartment. And then you end up with a map. I kind of wish I would have applied for this one. Oh God. Oh, it's so cute. Hindsight 2020. Also, huge thing that I wanted to point out. When I first moved to New York, I was a full-time student at Pace University and I really thought the housing connect like it just didn't work because I was never getting called for any apartment. It wasn't until after I got this apartment that I learned that students are ineligible for rent-stabilized housing because I guess, you know, there was a lot of affluent families coming, their children were getting these rent-stabilized apartments, and then these rich families were getting this huge deal because their childhood student, they had no income. In order to kind of circumvent that, students are ineligible for rent-stabilized apartment. That's why for four years I had no luck. But now that you know this information, hopefully you have a much, much, much better experience. So the next thing you might be wondering is what's the timeline? How long does this take? In my experience, I applied for the apartment that I'm in now in January of 2021. At the time, I had a lease that was ending in March. So I was really pressed for time. I really was hoping to get something in three months. And that is not the case at all. So for this apartment, I applied in January. It wasn't until six months later in June that I got the call to submit all my documents, and it's a really easy process. They'll email you, tell you your number is called, and tell you you can submit your document. These are all the documents that they ask you for. Once I uploaded my documents, and please, please, please be timely on this. You only have like a certain amount of time. I want to say maybe five days at most to submit all your documents. If you don't submit your documents in that time, finnito, zip, you're done. They're going on to the next person. You can't get those apartments anymore. And now you have to wait for the next housing opportunity. So please, as soon as they tell you to submit your documents, submit your documents as soon as possible. Once I submit my documents, I waited about a week or two for them to review them. And then once they have viewed them, they gave me a call and said, hey, like, please come see the apartments this weekend. Guys, it was so stressful and so dramatic for me because that weekend, I was literally like on my way to Orlando. They called me on a Thursday and I left for Orlando, like Friday morning. I ended up having to cut my vacation short. Like I felt so bad because me and one of my girlfriends had planned this trip for like a month. I ended up having to cut the trip short, left on Saturday, arrived in New York on Sunday and like viewed the apartments like that day. But it goes that quick. Once your documents are approved, they want you to come literally pick your apartment. I wish I could have came earlier. Like the girl, it's like it's the first come, first sort of basis. Like I show the building from the top down. So the earlier you get here, the more likely you're going to get like a better apartment. But I love the apartment I have. I miss one day. So I was like one of the first people that she saw on Sunday morning. Super quick after that. So that was in June. And literally when I toured the building guys, like it was a hot mess. Like it was still very much under construction. Like things were not pretty. There were like rats running around because there was just so much construction everywhere. But the apartments were done and my apartment looked really beautiful. And I knew this is the one that I wanted. After that, they just did a little bit more like document checking. So after I picked my apartment, they then asked me to supply. I can't remember off the top of my head. But it was just like a couple of extra things. So I think it really was just bringing my pay subs up to date because I submitted them in June. And at this point now it was July. So I guess they wanted to check to see that I was still working through that. It was a done deal. Like I signed after I viewed the apartment on a Sunday. I signed the lease. I want to say that Thursday gave my first month my security deposit. And yeah, picked up my keys. I didn't move in until August because the building was very much under construction when I signed in June. So it did take a couple of more months of me just kind of waiting for the apartment to be moving ready. You have to be patient. You have to be patient. You have to have to have to be patient. Like mine took eight months, but I still get calls to this day from apartments that I applied to in 2021. So over a year. So if your application still says like waiting or in process, there's still hope. There's still open apartments. So just wait, just wait for it. And I know waiting can be hard if you don't have any information. So since, you know, Housing Connect doesn't really give you much insight. I have found this online forum called CityData. And that is kind of just like an anonymous like web forum that people use to keep in touch on, you know, like different rent stabilized units in New York City. So if you're interested in one building in particular, you can just go in CityData, put in the address of the building and you can see if someone started a thread on the building. It's really great because if there is a building that you really want, people are so nice and so sweet. They'll come in here and say, Hey, my lot number is XYZ. I just got called for this building, submit documents or, Hey, like I just viewed these apartments. Hey, like there's only one bedrooms left or, Hey, there's no more three bedrooms. So people are just like sharing information about these buildings, which is really great because your housing agent does not have the time to talk to you all the time. So it's really great. And I feel like just using CityData really helps me like just stay patient and wait for, you know, my dream building to come. OK, so that brings us to the end of the video. I know this is like a huge topic. And when I did my rent stabilized apartment tour, a lot of people had questions about it. So if you do have any other questions that I didn't get to you or I didn't answer, please leave me a comment down below. Like this video if you want more like rent stabilized apartment stuff or if there's anything else I can really tell you guys about the process that maybe I didn't answer in this video. More than happy to make a part two. But yeah, thank you so much for watching. My name is Neko. Once again, please follow me on Instagram. Please like this video. Please subscribe to my channel and have an amazing day. Thank you so much. Bye.