Apartment hunting in Brooklyn earlier this year was the predictable nightmare.
I saw a place on Fifth Street that looked perfectly acceptable except that it had no closets. Not one.
And a place above a dog day care business where, the rental agent swore, the clientele were let outside to race around the courtyard, barking joyously, for merely an hour each day.
And a place on Thirteenth Street where my daughter and 7-year-old granddaughter joined me at an afternoon open house. I was already thinking nope when I heard my granddaughter’s delighted cry from a rear window: “Oh! Look at all the rats!” A troupe of them were cavorting about the garbage bags piled behind the building. Definitely nope.
These rentals, and the others I visited over three months, were awfully expensive compared to my rent-controlled two-bedroom apartment in New Jersey. Headlines pointed out that New York City was enduring its lowest vacancy rate in 50 years, and rents had been soaring commensurately.
So like any contemporary would-be Brooklynite, I was braced for a dispiriting struggle. But I had an additional issue to contend with: I was 74.
Older adults are less likely to move than younger ones, a 2022 Census Bureau report showed. About 6 percent of those over age 65 moved each year from 2015 to 2019, compared with about 15 percent of the younger population. Still, senior migration topped three million people a year.
When elders do relocate, the leading reason — ahead of their desire for nicer neighborhoods or lower housing costs — is to be closer to family, according to a 2021 analysis.
That was me. Ever since my granddaughter’s birth, I’d been trekking weekly to Downtown Brooklyn to care for her on what we called Bubbe Day, a trip that took an hour and a quarter by public transportation.
We had talked often of my moving nearby, since my daughter and son-in-law declined to join me in leafy-yet-cosmopolitan Montclair, but I kept putting it off, citing my comparatively affordable rent.
Then the kids moved themselves, deeper into the borough, and my trip from Jersey grew to almost two hours each way. We were just too far apart for me to help them as much as I wanted to or for them, at some point, to help me. It was time to get serious.
Moving at an advanced age is different.
You grow more conscious of your physical ability. No third-floor walk-ups or higher, I told the real estate broker assisting me. I could handle that many stairs this year and probably next, but down the road? Though nobody can predict, it’s not a smart bet. The neighborhoods where I was looking, hoping to be only a couple of subway stops from my family, had few rental buildings with elevators, so stairs mattered.
Also: That recording you hear on the trains, proudly informing riders that the New York City subway system has 150 accessible stations? It doesn’t mention that there are 472 stations in all. For the sake of my future on mass transit, I wanted my nearest station to be among the 30 percent with elevators or escalators.
The sheer physical drudgery of relocating also looms large. The winnowing and donating and disposing, the boxing and unpacking — just thinking about all that made my back stiffen. I had already gone through a major downsizing from a house, so an apartment-to-apartment move should have seemed less taxing. But I was 15 years older.
I knew of a good solution for this challenge, though. A new kind of professional, the senior move manager, has emerged to help older people handle both the myriad details and the physical labor of relocation. More than a thousand such companies have sprouted nationally in the past 20 years; you can find local ones through online searches or use the locator on the National Association of Senior Move Managers website. I had used managers to help my dad and my sister transition into assisted living facilities.
A senior move manager will survey your home and review the floor plan of the place you’re moving into. Then she (usually) helps you figure out what you can take, what you can sell or donate, what must be junked. She helps you accomplish all that and plans what will go where in your new home. She recommends movers.
The crew members pack you up, unpack you and — the genius part — put everything away in drawers, cabinets and closets. Then they whisk away the boxes and Bubble Wrap. When they’re done, the new place already looks like home. Some move managers even hang your pictures on the walls.
Admittedly, this doesn’t come cheap. My manager estimated that her company’s services — if I ever found that elusive Brooklyn apartment — would run $3,500 to $5,000, way more than the truck and the movers would cost. But I considered move management an investment in my sanity and my musculoskeletal system. With a deep breath, I signed the contract.
There’s no way, though, to outsource the emotional effort of leaving a town where you’ve spent 40 years. Practically every trip to the farmer’s market, the downtown movie theater or the neighborhood bookstore meant bumping into someone familiar. I went to an exercise class several times a week and if I didn’t show up for a few days, someone would call to find out why. I knew where to go to repair everything from my watch to my Subaru.
In Brooklyn, I could replace much of what I needed. I would find friends with whom to have lunch, see movies and play Scrabble.
And of course, I could more easily spend time with my family. I could sometimes stay for dinner if I weren’t worried about the New Jersey Transit schedule. Since it didn’t involve a four-hour round trip, I could watch my granddaughter (known to Times readers as Bartola, a family tribute to former Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon) perform in the school dance festival.
But late-life moves leave us unlikely to replace the kinds of relationships that have ripened over decades. We simply don’t have enough remaining time.
I pressed on, submitting the formidable documentation that New York City landlords now require — tax returns, bank statements, letters of recommendation from past landlords. I was routinely asked how much over the advertised rent I was willing to pay and feared I would always lose out to some junior executive at Citibank. I lost seven pounds on the unpleasant but effective High Anxiety Diet.
Yet just as everyone had predicted, though I hadn’t truly believed it, by a stroke of luck I found an apartment in a gracious brownstone on a shady street, just two subway stops from my kids. It had light, space, a small second bedroom that could function as an office. It had a dishwasher! The rent, however sobering, was lower than that place with rats. I signed the lease and began sending change of address notices.
A round of goodbye meals and parties followed, gatherings that felt simultaneously lovely and sad. Then the move managers arrived and spent parts of two days packing 70 boxes. A few hours later, in Brooklyn, they unpacked them.
I’ve settled in, met my friendly neighbors, found doctors, acquired a New York State driver’s license and registered to vote.
I miss having a washer and dryer in the basement and windows on all four sides. I miss walking and yakking with friends of long duration. And I’m aware that this probably isn’t my final residence; the day may come when I can’t manage two flights of stairs.
Still, I’m convinced that I made the right decision at the right time. Nothing would have gotten easier if I’d waited. This is home now. Let the new adventure unfold.
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