I was able to do it!

Oh, in Astoria, I should mention. I think Washington Heights would be another place to think about for that price range.

You can get a pretty nice 1 br in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx for about $1000. It usually includes some utilities, if not all. My daughter has a 3br with everything except cable included and she pays 1800 a month (she has a roommate). She even has her own bathroom. Riverdale in the Bronx is also really nice, and is just above Washington Hts/Inwood.

I live by myself in a studio at the top of Crown Heights at the top of a 3-story brownstone. Rent + DirecTV DVR + Wifi Internet + Electricity + Gas = $1,140, all together which I pay directly to my landlord. In the winter, this decreases by $25 because I don't need to use my A/C then. It takes approx. 25 to 30 min. to get to downtown NYC for me using the local C train.

A friend of mine lives on the UES near First Avenue in a 1 bedroom at the top of a 5-story walkup (with roof access). He can fit a queen-sized bed into his bedroom, but it's a tight fit, and his appliances need updating. Rent-stabilized, he pays about $1,400, not including utilities. I found that place for him, because travel time to this former job in the Flatiron District was also about 20 min.

*polishes off her real estate license....*

No.

But you can live here anyway. It's that kind of place.

For $825 a month my buddy in the Bronx lives up on 242nd Street right by Van Cortlandt Park in a nice fifth floor walkup one-bedroom with a tree outside the kitchen window and plenty of light. Of course, he works up there, otherwise it's a fairly long train ride to midtown.

Knock a few hundred off that and you can live lease-free, a ten-minute train ride from midtown, in squalor, where you can share a kitchen and a bathroom with a few stinky old bastards, listen to trains at all hours, and step lively around rat pancakes on the never-cleaned street. There are plenty worse places, I guarantee it.

Ugh, I'm worried about my credit, though. I mean, freaking recession here, ppl. I was unemployed for 18 months! Kinda not happy about having to look for a co-signer.

Find a place where you don't need one!

I hope I can!