In Chelsea, there is often what is supposed to happen, what is written on paper, and then there is always what really happens – the unvarnished truth of life that occurs at the ground level.
Nothing could be more emblematic of that than the culture of subletting apartments and rooms, and how that is causing havoc, and a potential avalanche, in the eviction crisis – an invisible piece of a crisis that overall has gotten great attention.
Subletting is the practice of one person renting an apartment, then charging rent to others – mostly undocumented residents without social security numbers – for the apartment or for rooms in the apartment. In many cases, the person renting the apartment never lives in the apartment, and the landlord sometimes doesn’t even know that other people are living in his or her property.