All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

I took down my Post-it note installation I’ve Lived in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn (more images on Flickr). I didn’t know what to expect from it all so it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and a week’s worth of time, and 2) people responded! After one week, 151 notes were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less - a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146. (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720. Some other interesting responses:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs - $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr - $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs - $1000 (”w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs - $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs - $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs - $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs - $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs - $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs - $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC response) for 1 wk - $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs depending on the number of years people have lived in their apartment:

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. I printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now I see that I still botched the wording - most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who I met while tending to the project - one guy has lived in a 2-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him a mere $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know my old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble” (agreed, ha). And a woman named Deborah bought 3 homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Design, My projects, Public Art, Signs, Urban Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.