If you are looking for an apartment in New York that's filthy dirty in a rat infested neighborhood, this is your dream come true! I rented this place for a month and tried my best to stick it out but bailed with ten days to go as I just couldn't stomach the mismatched, stained linen that must have come from some Goodwill
free box or the thread bare, holey towels, the floor in desperate need of refinishing (not to mention mopping), the smegma encrusted medicine cabinet, the sewer pipe going from floor to ceiling in front of the toilet, the greasy kitchen, the single 60 watt light bulb in the living/dining area, or the brown grease covered expanding foam exploding out of out of cracks around the gas line in the kitchen next to the stove. And if you are even remotely overweight (which I am thankfully not) you will not fit through the bathroom door.
The furniture was from some left over college student with a stained futon covered by a torn serape, kitchen table that had leaves propped up with books and pieces of left over construction lumber, two hundred year old incredibly uncomfortable wooden chairs, completely unidentifiable "art", and this welcoming abode came after walking up six flights of stairs through a stairwell that would undoubtedly glow under a black light from floor to ceiling with every body fluid left since it was last cleaned in the 30s. Beware the banisters!
Of course since there's no place in the apartment to sit comfortably and read or do anything else, you can hit the garbage strewn streets below and watch the rats play. The city came in the middle of one night and scraped off the top layer of asphalt for a three block stretch and never did anything more about it so that made it even more attractive.
Bring your ear plugs, hand sanitizer, soap, shampoo, towels, linens, rubber gloves, shoe coverings, light bulbs and a reading light and you'll be all set to go! Oh and just ignore that man who stood in the corner of the "lobby" scrolling on his phone for three weeks without ever looking up. But, as he's familiar, you can say hi to him when you see him digging through the trash cans in Washington Square Park, which I did. It was close by and that was a good thing.