How a Hairdresser and Painter Lives on $70,000 a Year in Chelsea

How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?

For almost 32 years, Gerald DeCock’s life in New York City has revolved around his apartment in the Hotel Chelsea. His 750-square-foot studio is where he paints, does yoga every morning, meets clients for haircuts and never, ever cooks — all for $2,700 a month, a steal for the prime Manhattan location. Rooms in the recently renovated hotel typically start at about $500 a night.

That may all be about to change. After a yearslong legal battle, the hotel’s owners may evict Mr. DeCock, who believes he has the only unit that is not rent-stabilized in the residential side of the building.

He isn’t ready to think about starting over. He knows it will be difficult to find a place he can afford downtown, near his friends and his favorite restaurants.

Now, Mr. DeCock is hoping for a miracle — or at least a check from the building’s owners that can help him land on his feet. (The hotel’s press representatives did not reply to requests for comment.)

Between cutting hair and selling paintings, Mr. DeCock, who is 67, made $70,000 last year.

No ConEd Bills

Mr. DeCock arrived in New York in the early 1990s after a stint in Paris, doing hair for photo shoots. He bounced around apartments in Chelsea before a friend told him about a newly available unit in the hotel, where she lived at the time.

The $2,000 per month studio was small, but had high ceilings. It looked like the somewhat sterile hotel room it had been, with white walls and not much else to it, except for an old stove that never got especially hot.

He moved in on Oct. 1, 1994, and has been there ever since.

There is no sign that any corner of the walls was ever bare. The apartment is a riot of color, with every inch, including the floors and one side of the oven, painted in bursts of hot pink and gold and purple. His paintings line the walls, and there is always incense burning. All the other doors on the floor are painted a muted black. He has papered his with overlapping triangles of fuchsia, silver and bright blue.

Over the years, as Mr. DeCock has decorated and redecorated, he has made his apartment the hub of his social life and his workplace.

He sees clients for haircuts at his home, or sometimes meets them in their own homes, so he does not have to rent space at a salon. He charges $150 to $200 per haircut and has been seeing some of the same clients for decades. Last month, he made about $6,000 on haircuts alone.

The apartment is warm and well-insulated in the winter, because it’s on a high floor. Though the studio tends to get stuffy in the summer, the air conditioning bill has always been covered by the hotel, because it’s impossible to sort out whether the residents or hotel guests who share the hotel’s floors are using the energy.

Mr. DeCock doesn’t think he’s ever seen a ConEd bill for this apartment.

Home Is Where the Fumes Are

The walls are covered in a patchwork of paintings he has created on his kitchen table or on the floor, largely motifs of moons, suns, crosses and other “spiritual” symbols.

Most of his paintings are done on 16 inch by 20 inch canvases and sell for $500, though he has one 10 foot by 10 foot piece he is hoping to sell for $20,000.

He sold a package of 21 paintings to the hotel, at a 20 percent discount, for about $8,680 total. He sees the sale as a good reason for the hotel’s owners to keep him in his home, even though they could turn his apartment into a large hotel room. “I’m your brand, man,” he said, referring to the owners. “What are you doing?”

As Mr. DeCock has started to face the likelihood that he’ll soon have to move, he hosted a sale to empty out dozens of paintings. He made about $6,000 over a few days, as friends, neighbors and at least one local celebrity streamed in and out of his apartment, toting paintings under their arms as they left.

Mr. DeCock tries to keep the cost of his painting materials low. He sticks to inexpensive canvasses from Michaels or Blick Art Materials right across the street, where a pack of twenty 16 x 20 inch canvasses sells for $51.49. And he uses only acrylic paint, which is less expensive than oil-based paint. It also gives off fewer fumes, which is helpful, since he paints a few feet away from his lofted bed.

“I call this place the vortex,” Mr. DeCock said of his apartment. “It brings out the creative juices.”

In My Neighborhood

Mr. DeCock hasn’t left New York in as long as he can remember. He barely even goes to Brooklyn.

“Everything I do is in the neighborhood,” he said. It’s where he meets friends, eats his meals and takes long walks on the piers by the Hudson River.

What Mr. DeCock doesn’t do, he said, is buy clothes or shop for much of anything, including groceries. He does not drink coffee at home. His fridge is empty save for a bag of grapes recently brought over by a friend, and he stores his paint bottles above the freezer. There is a sole bottle of vinegar in the pantry.

Mr. DeCock, who is a vegetarian, stopped cooking after the pandemic, when he admitted to himself that he was terrible at it.

Now, he goes out for almost every meal — although he often skips lunch or dinner without noticing. He might run across the street for an order of the $27 seitan scaloppine at his favorite vegan restaurant, or walk a few blocks to a Mexican restaurant, where he’ll order the vegetarian enchiladas for $24.50.

When Mr. DeCock is home and not working or sleeping, he’s often watching television. His big splurge is cable, his Spectrum bill is $250 a month. He also pays for Netflix, $19.99 a month, and Hulu, $18.99 a month. A Colorado native, Mr. DeCock sometimes misses nature, so he compensates by watching reality television shows about people who have to survive in the wilderness.

It reminds him that he’s happy to live in New York and really happy to be in his apartment at the Chelsea.

“I’ve had a life here,” he said. “It’s defined me.”