Whether Rakoff is skewering the musical "Rent," describing his struggles with cancer or devouring his surroundings as he scoots from Disneyland to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Mormon Utah, these mordantly funny essays make an inspired case for always assuming the worst.
But Ms. Hoskins, who works as a nursing assistant and a baby sitter to pay her quarterly $2,575 rent, describes the most important perk of her single bedroom as this, "I love the fact that I can close that door, and it's my space".
A review left by a previous renter describes it perfectly: "In a word, it was enchanting".
The only one I can visit (the units are 99percentt rented) is described by Daria Salusbury, a senior vice president of the Related Management Company, as a "petite one-bedroom".
In "Making Rent," Harris describes speaking to Lee twice over the course of nearly a decade.
He also recounts how Coco Chanel gave him 12 signed drawings by Matisse, which he sold for food and rent, and describes his affection for Maria Callas and his dislike of "the horrible Aristotle Onassis".
Elizabeth Blackmar, in her fascinating real-estate history, "Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850," describes the church's decision in 1734 "to lease out lotts of ground for any number of years not exceeding forty".
Bringing in new measures to control shocking rent rises (measures described by Grant Shapps as "Venezuelan-style rent controls") is a key example of where Miliband has tried to shift the balance between the haves and the have-a-lot-lesses.
But in New York about 900,000 apartments fall under rent regulation and can be described as either "rent stabilized" or "rent controlled," meaning the rent by law can rise by only a small percentage each year.
The Tory Help to Buy Isas seek to help savers stuck renting; the Liberal Democrat rent-to-own properties turn renting into something that feels more like a long-term mortgage deal; Labour's longer-term tenancies with staged rent rises are described as helping families "plan for the future", as if there will always be something beyond the signature on the tenancy agreement.
