One day this past summer, I came home from work to find a letter wedged in the crack of the heavy steel door that I have lived behind for the past six years. Like so many that bear bad news, it was folded neatly into thirds.

The letter informed me that I was a month and a half late on my rent, and if I didn’t pay my balance in 30 days, the property company that owns my 100-plus-unit building would begin eviction proceedings.

I’d known this was coming, in some ways for a very long time. In the past eight years, my salary, which had nominally increased from $55,000 to $64,000, had, when adjusted for inflation, in fact been decreasing, just as rents continued to rise.

There is nothing particularly tragic or unique about my circumstances: I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, a marker of a middle-class lifestyle I had hoped but failed to attain by now, at age 36. I’d noticed, in the past couple of years, friends and acquaintances finding themselves at a similar juncture: one, at 35, moved back in with a roommate. Another told me the rent increase on their apartment meant, without a better salary, they would run out of money within the year.

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