School teacher and aspiring novelist Matthew Thomas won the jackpot in the New York apartment lottery when he scored his Upper East Side studio apartment, around the corner from Elaine’s, for just $14,000. Literally; the man won the right to buy the apartment in a lottery that makes available a minuscule number of apartments to people with incomes under $49,625. The units are part of 24 Mitchell-Lama co-op buildings in Manhattan and most applicants wait a decade for a shot at one.
The 32-year-old Thomas was living back at home with his mother when “housing ex machina” descended in the form of a letter from Maxwell-Kates, which manages the building, telling him that if all his paperwork was approved he’d be eligible to buy the apartment. Which he did, with a little help from Mom; now he just has to scrape together the $295 maintenance fee every month. Your heart bleeds for him, doesn’t it?
During the application process Thomas was understandably paranoid that the deal would slip through his fingers, so it wasn’t until he finally moved in that he broke the news to his friends, who are all just thrilled for him but probably wish he'd stop talking about. Still, as he told the Times, Thomas still can’t shake “this weird feeling that this will all be taken away from me by some Kafkaesque bureaucratic oversight.”
So naturally you want to know how you can get hooked up with a sweet deal like this, and not have to live with roommates in Bushwick at 45. Well here you go; if it works out you can invite Gothamist to the housewarming party.
Photo via The New York Times
