How to Find an Apartment in New York, in This Economy

The TLDR answer, unfortunately, involves losing your mind

Not sure if you’ve heard, but it’s a pretty bad time to be looking for an apartment, an apparently increasingly scarce commodity, in New York City. Due to the unfortunate confluence of factors — low inventory, people who left New York moving back to it, landlords hiking up pandemic rents, tenants scared to leave their apartments because they don’t want to be subjected to the horrifying ordeal of finding a new one in this environment, literal…