Before Hurricane Sandy, Nhi Mundy had a good life in the financial district with her family. She and her husband, Michael Mundy, were raising three children while he worked as a photographer and she partnered with him to start “An Afternoon With,” a blog that featured intimate images of individuals and families in their homes.
Then the extraordinary storm flooded their two-bedroom apartment. New owners bought the building, made repairs and raised the rent by nearly 30 percent.
“We had to let go of our lives in the city,” Ms. Mundy said.
The family relocated to Jeffersonville, N.Y., in the Catskills, about two hours north of the city. They got a dog, they got a cat and chickens, and they settled into a rural existence, still missing much of what they had before the storm.
“My husband and I had always lamented that New York City prices were absurd, especially for artists,” she said, “We figured the only way prices would come down again was if another disaster hit.”
“After the pandemic it was like, ‘Oh, my God, I need to see people.’ So, we thought maybe we should figure out a way to come back.”
She started peeking at rents in the city, just to get a sense of the prices. “My husband contested it at first,” she said, laughing. “He thought I was leaving him or something — kidding, not kidding.”
But even he was intrigued when more bargains started popping up in the early days of the pandemic.
“I grew up in New York,” Mr. Mundy said, “so I realized it could be like coming home.”
At one point, they came across a tempting large studio with big windows and lots of light. It was rent-stabilized, which meant they knew with confidence that they wouldn’t be paying 30 percent more when the lease expired. The only catch for Ms. Mundy and her husband was that it was on the Upper East Side.
“As die-hard downtowners,” she said, “We were considering the Upper East Side sort of begrudgingly for two reasons. One, because real estate downtown is crazy — it’s just very expensive. And then because the Upper East Side is where a lot of good public schools are. At one point we realized private school upstate would cost as much as an apartment in the city.”
Shortly after the apartment came along, Ms. Mundy was accepted into a creative-writing program at Columbia University. “It all sort of fit into place and made sense to have this sort of dual lifestyle,” she said.
Ms. Mundy’s youngest child, Quyen, attends Eleanor Roosevelt High School and resides in the apartment full time. Her two older children — Isabella, 20, and Kai, 18 — both attend Bard College.
“Because the space is small, we can live together, the three of us — or the five of us — but it’s not comfortable. Having two people at a time is a good comfort level. Three is pushing it. So, my marriage has adopted a kind of part-time status. Most of the time, I spend Mondays through Thursdays here with Quyen, and my husband comes down to stay with them Thursday and …
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