Advice with Aydan: International Off-Campus Housing

With the COVID-19 safety measures Barnard is planning for the upcoming academic year - specifically, de-densifying dorms to create a safer on-campus residential environment - students may be thinking about alternative, off-campus housing for a semester or possibly the academic year. Navigating off-campus housing is always something that takes a while to figure out and that can be complicated and time consuming, but especially so for international students. Renting in NYC requires a guarantor - someone who guarantees payment for a lease as a backup in the event that you don’t pay rent, and can prove that they earn enough money to do this - which is itself a significant financial barrier for many, and in addition, most landlords require the guarantor to be have a US bank account, US income, US tax documents, and US credit history. As an international student who moved off-campus last August for my senior year, I want to share some of the knowledge I gained, as it’s quite hard to find specified advice online for international students renting in the city, and it’s likely that international students may be considering off-campus living now more than usual. 

First, remember that renting off-campus is not your only option! While Barnard Res Life is guaranteeing housing for first-years and sophomores in the Fall, and juniors and seniors in the Spring, international students are eligible to apply for on-campus housing in other semesters, even if it is not guaranteed (see the 2020-21 Academic Year Plan on the Barnard website). It’s possible that you may indeed be able to obtain on-campus housing. But if that doesn’t work out for you, there are other options.

Renting an off-campus apartment 

There are a couple of ways you can go about actually looking for an apartment - you can search online (StreetEasy.com is a good place to start), which of course may be easiest from overseas - or you can get a realty group/agent to help you. Sometimes, you may find something online that is managed by a realty group who then offers to show you their other properties and help you organize your documents and payments. Keep in mind that if you use a realty group to find an apartment, they will charge you a fee for their services, sometimes more than the value of an entire month of rent. Always ask about what the agent fees are!

Once you find a place, the two main obstacles you are likely to encounter as an international student are 1) the aforementioned guarantor problem and 2) the fact that renting in NYC is very, very expensive, even beyond finding a qualifying guarantor. In regards to 2), Barnard has stated that students on financial aid may be able to apply to use financial aid for off-campus housing, with more information forthcoming; also see the section of this post below about affordability, COVID, and community responsibility. 

In regards to 1), you do have options to acquire an institutional guarantor in lieu of a guarantor who has US income. Organizations like TheGuarantors and  Insurent Lease Guaranty specifically provide their services to international students (among many others) and are able to accept non-US assets. Keep in mind, though, that these companies typically still require you to have a guarantor or proof of income/assets, even if foreign, that amount to around 30-50x the amount of monthly rent. Rhino is a service also frequently used by international students (even though their focus is security deposits rather than replacing guarantors outright) that NYC landlords like as an additional protection. Not all (or even any) of these services are guaranteed to be accepted by any given landlord; there are definitely many who will accept institutional guarantors, but you can’t assume off the bat that they will, so always check and ask. 

Of course - though this is not the most useful and probably an obvious thing to say - if you are a returning student and/or friends with Barnard students who do have US guarantors also looking to move off-campus, it might make life a lot easier to try and rent an apartment together with them. If their guarantors feel fine about including you in their guarantee of the apartment, then you won’t have to worry about finding your own. 

If none of the above are options for you, you might consider looking into subletting.

Subletting

Subletting an apartment - leasing it from someone who is on the apartment’s original lease with the landlord - is legal in NYC, but informal sublets (such as the likes of AirBnb) over an extended period of time (>30 days) is not. People typically list sublets in Facebook groups (for example, Columbia University Off-Campus Housing), and sometimes even on Barnard Buy/Sell/Trade, an unofficial Facebook marketplace group composed mostly of Barnard students and alumni. You might want to pursue a sublet because the person you’re subleasing from may not require a US guarantor like most landlords or real estate agencies do; a security deposit may work fine (this is not necessarily always the case, and will vary depending on who you’re subletting from and their landlord’s preferences, too). You should be signing a sublease agreement before you move into a sublet: this is necessary to ensure that the sublease is a) legal, and b) something that the person you’re subleasing from is actually bound to as well, so they can’t kick you out halfway through the period you agreed on because they changed their mind. 

A note on affordability, COVID, and community responsibility

It goes without saying that some areas of NYC are more expensive than others. Morningside Heights (1) and the Upper West Side below it are almost without exception more expensive than Harlem, Hamilton/Washington Heights, and other neighborhoods above and east of Barnard, making the latter popular areas for students to rent off-campus housing. As I’ve discussed, housing in NYC is very expensive, and of course not many people can afford rent in more expensive areas of the city. 

However - and this may not be obvious knowledge to international students who aren’t particularly familiar with NYC - Harlem, the Heights, and various other neighborhoods in upper Manhattan are historically Black and Latinx neighborhoods with majority populations of Black and brown communities. These neighborhoods have been increasingly disrupted by gentrification, especially by wealthy (and often white) renters, like Barnard/Columbia students for example, increasing the demand and prices for housing and making these neighborhoods less affordable for communities who have been here for generations. It cannot be emphasized enough the responsibility we have as Barnard and Columbia students entering these neighborhoods to minimize the harm of our presence - always, but especially during the COVID pandemic which is disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities. If renting in Morningside Heights or the Upper West Side is financially feasible for you, it would be wise to seriously consider. If it is not, and you end up seeking housing in POC-majority neighborhoods, it is crucial to take explicit care to protect your neighborhood community by practicing social distancing, wearing face coverings, and attempting to the full extent of your ability not to engage in practices that put others at increased risk. 

President Beilock, in her message to Barnard students about the upcoming academic year, rightly prioritizes “creating a culture in which everyone at Barnard understands how their individual decisions impact others and acts accordingly” - wearing face coverings and getting regularly tested for COVID - which “is paramount to the health and safety of the whole community.”  This “community” must also extend to the neighborhoods you may live in, just as much (if not even more importantly) as to Barnard’s campus. 

 (1) In fact, Morningside Heights itself used to be considered part of Harlem; the gentrification generated over the years by Barnard and Columbia’s campuses is what established and continues to Morningside Heights as a distinct neighborhood. There isn’t even necessarily a clear delineation between where Morningside Heights ends and Harlem begins, which is important to consider when thinking about housing