Living In A High Rise During Coronavirus: What’s Changed For Us

COVID-19 turned the world upside down this year. Commonly known as the Coronavirus, COVID-19 has altered a huge portion of our daily lives. Between sickness, deaths, mass unemployment and a halt to the economy, it’s hard to go more than a few minutes without either hearing or thinking about the Coronavirus. Even when we turn off the news and go about our day, we get reminders of COVID wherever we go – the grocery store, public transportation, gas stations and many other places that we never thought twice about before. Like everywhere else, apartment buildings have also experienced changes. This article is about our experience of living in a high rise during coronavirus, and some of the changes we’ve experienced.

First, My Candid Opinion…

There are plenty of people who are justified in being stressed over the Coronavirus. Family and friends are getting sick or even dying. People are without incomes. Businesses can’t open. Those are real problems.

Living in a high rise during coronavirus has changed things, but let’s get real – we’ve experienced inconveniences and minor adjustments, not life-ruining, permenant loss. These changes are something we can easily adapt to and overcome. This article is not meant to be a whine session!

Our Experiences May Be Unique To New York

Just about everyone knows that New York has experienced COVID in a unique way – politics aside, the population density and busyness of the greater NYC area caused a massive spike in Coronavirus cases in March and April. Since then, many regulations and restrictions have been put into place. This includes apartment buildings, which house millions of people in this area.

People living in high rises in other states may have a different experience that what’s outlined here.

What We’ve Experienced While Living In A High Rise During Coronavirus

Here’s a brief rundown of the changes that have taken place in our building and other buildings nearby:

• “Mandatory” Masks In Lobby & Hallways
• Severely Restricted Amenity Access
• No Shared Elevators
• Management Office Has Been Closed
• A Lot More Food & Package Deliveries
• “Rush Hour” Is Eerily Quiet
• Conscious Of Touching Everything – Doors, Buttons, Etc.

Here’s a detailed explanation of each change we’ve experienced.

“Mandatory” Masks In Lobby & Hallways

Just like everywhere else in New York, masks are now “mandatory” in our building. The majority of people wear them.

I’ve put mandatory in quotes because many people in the building still don’t wear a mask. Technically, they don’t need to. No staff member in the building can actually enforce the mask rule.

In a store, restaurant or other business, the management can refuse to serve someone if they aren’t ‘masked up’. If a resident wants to leave the building or come home while not wearing a mask, though, the staff can’t just tell them not to.

Signage about wearing masks is posted, but whether people wear them or not has come down to morality / consideration of others, not jurisdiction.

Severely Restricted Amenity Access

This has been one of the biggest adjustments in terms of living in a high rise during Coronavirus – until recently, amenities were closed for months. As we’ve said on this site before, amenities are one of the best parts of living in a high rise. This includes the computer room, common area and most importantly (for us) – the gym.

To save some expenses, we chose our building specifically because of the gym it has; we could get rid of our gym membership and save time traveling to and from it, too – win-win!

The gym was closed from mid-March until the end of August. It has since reopened, but a lot of weights and equipment that we regularly used has been removed. Maximum capacity is 25% of what it used to be, too.

In other words, we’ve been doing our usual quarantine workout routine instead. When this will change is to be determined…

No Shared Elevators

‘Social distancing’ is more than just social – it’s now strongly encouraged in all public places and in some cases, enforced.

For the last six months, our building has mandated that we maintain social distance at all times, even in the elevators. As you can imagine, this basically means that elevators can’t be shared.

When the Coronavirus first broke out, nobody shared elevators. Depending on the day and time, this would cause massive lines all the way out of the building waiting for an elevator.

More recently, the majority of people are fine with sharing – some with masks, others without. This could be due to the shrinking number of cases in New York, but I honestly think it’s because no one wants to wait in line anymore!

Even now in September 2020, some people won’t share elevators -even when everyone has a mask! That’s a bit extreme to me, but it’s their right to refuse I suppose.

Management Office Has Been Closed

This hasn’t been a huge issue, but could become annoying in the right setting. Our building’s management and leasing office was closed of several months and is open by appointment only now.

Appointments are fine. When the office was closed, though, it was more of a pain. For instance, we had noticed a discrepancy on our rent statement and wanted to discuss it. We’d normally walk in with the bill in-hand and figure it out on the spot. Now it’s through email, which can get frustrating if there’s misunderstands or lots of back-and-forth. This goes for any issue that requires management to be involved.

This has been easy enough to work around, but gone are the days of just walking into the office and asking questions or getting help.

A Lot More Food & Package Deliveries

I personally know a few people who’ve barely left their house since March. Some people may have good reason for this – underlying health issues, older people living with them, etc. – but many people just don’t feel comfortable going out in this environment.

The ‘environment’ reflects not only COVID, but also the chaos, anger and collective stress that is felt in places like the supermarket or on public transport.

In turn, many people get just about everything delivered – groceries, supplies, takeout and plenty of miscellaneous stuff. Our front desk staff has been handling a lot more packages than they used to. I’ll admit, we’ve ordered a lot more online as well.

“Rush Hour” Is Eerily Quiet

Much like the highway, our building normally experiences rush-hour levels of ‘traffic’ coming in and out of the building.

In the past, elevators took a lot longer to get when people were leaving for work or coming home. The same can be said about the parking garage, amenities, etc.

After the COVID breakout, many of us had no specific schedule anymore. No commuting, few open businesses, schools closed, the list goes on.

With so many people working from home and so few places to go, there has been an eery quietness in and around our building since March during these busy times.

Since more people have a flexible schedule, I’m sure it’s just a matter of people coming and going whenever they please rather than at a specific time.

This goes beyond the building – even Manhattan was extremely quiet around April-May. For example, we drove up a major avenue on a Sunday morning in April and there was nobody in our rearview mirror or in front of us. It was reminiscent of “I Am Legend”, except infinitely less rubble and zombies.

These unusually quiet times have since finished. As people return back to the ‘new normal’, the standard rush hour is returning. Plenty of people are still working from home, so the lobby and entrance are still pretty quiet.

Conscious Of Touching Everything – Doors, Buttons, Etc.

This last point is more of an internal shift than anything else. While living in a high rise during Coronavirus, we’ve become a lot more cognizant of how much we touch things with our bare hands.

Whether it be taking an elevator, walking in or out of the building, grabbing a door handle or even a railing in a stairwell, it now seems crazy that I used to do this routinely without a second thought.

Sure, I used to wash my hands…when it was convenient. The same hand I used to grab a door handle would be used to steer the car and drink a cup of coffee.

Now, hand sanitizing or hand washing occurs countless times per day. As soon as we get to the car from the building, out comes the Purell.

In a busy area where plenty of other people don’t practice good hygiene, it’s good practice to routinely wash our hands. Yes, there is more incentive to do this when there’s a reasonably good chance of contracting a nasty virus from anything you touch, but we really should have been aware of preventing germ transmission this whole time!

Overall, Things Are Normalizing

Like we said early on in this article – none of the above issues are real problems. Inconvenient? Yes. Annoying at times? Yes. With all the problems in the world and considering how many things could be worse, living in a high rise during Coronavirus has been just another adjustment. Life is full of changes – things will always be a little different in the future!