If we were to get a two-bedroom for the four of us, it would be around $1,800 and a cheap one bedroom is $1,350," Dist told me.
The council tax is a very bad way of raising money – it doesn't keep pace with inflation, it requires millionaires to pay just three times as much as people in cheap one bedroom flats and it is extremely difficult to increase in the current financial climate.
Access to all that doesn't come cheap; one-bedroom apartments fetch half a million dollars.
At the time of writing, the cheapest one-bedroom apartment at Elephant Park is listed for £608,000 while two-bedroom properties start at £750,000.
In the windows of estate agents, the cheapest two-bedroom properties in the old town are about £320,000.
Even better, at $1,075 a month, it is the cheapest one-bedroom I've rented in the five boroughs.
"The cheapest two-bedroom on the park would be about $1 million," she said, "in the least exclusive building, needs work, not great view".
Even though its cheapest one-bedroom flats will cost a trifling £595,000 the relevant planning consent requires that 200 of those 808 dwellings are "affordable".
While Ms. Baugham had paid $650 a month to rent her old apartment, the cheapest one-bedroom she found in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill was $950 a month.
So the family moved out of the zone to a cheaper two-bedroom rental in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, on what Ms. Giordano calls "the fringe" of Dumbo.
