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In 2013, Randy Dillard was living with his four sons and a daughter in an apartment at 198th Street and Bainbridge in the Bronx. The windows were broken; mold and mildew streaked the walls. In the winter, Dillard’s family had to boil water on the stove to bathe; there was no heat or hot water. When the New York City Housing Authority conducted an inspection of the apartment on behalf of Section 8, the federal rent assistance program that financed Dillard ’s rental, the unit failed the test, and Section 8 stopped paying Dillard ’s landlord, demanding that he make repairs. That winter, Dillard was hospitalized for two months with a bout of emphysema; when he came out, he was served with eviction papers for nonpayment of rent. advertisement “I stood in the middle of my hallway looking around my apartment thinking: What am I going to do with my stuff?” Dillard tells Fast Company . “I told myself: I’m going to end up homeless. I’m going to wind up in a shelter.” Dillard got word of a Bron...

NEW YORK CITY is all about connections. In a city overflowing with ambitious young singles , there is a dating pool full of professionals with the keys to unlock unlimited doors . Here are the 10 most fun to date–everyone from the people who “look good on paper” to the ones that will make your parents question your choices… 1. IG Influencer/Blogger The food scene in NYC is one of the best in the world. There are restaurants that cost upwards of $600/head for a meal, restaurants where you’ll wait over a year to get a table and restaurants that are so underground, you’ll likely never hear of them (unless you have an in). Apparently, it is an awful idea to date a chef, since they’re married to their work, so, how do you get into Manhattan’s top restaurants? Instagram Influencers. I know this Influencer who runs a food blog and popular Instagram account . His follower count alone gets him invites to top restaurants, sometimes for private dinners before they have even opened, where the che...

There were nine of us living in my first flat in Paris. It was grand on the outside, with a trompe l’oeil and marble staircase in the entrance hall, but grimy and dark inside. Only three of my flatmates had full-time jobs, and they all smoked. All the lights in the hall were broken. I moved there from London nearly four years ago, during the gloomiest days of François Hollande’s presidency, long before the youthful reformer Emmanuel Macron took power this year. Economic growth at the time was weak, unemployment double that of the UK today, and polls showed two-thirds of French people thought the nation was in “decline”. My flatmates, who I found online, were all 25- to 35-year-olds from the provinces who had come to Paris to find work and, passing their days in our tiny kitchen, were victims of this faded France. Within rigid labour markets many struggled to find jobs, or the right jobs, and were frustrated and angry. They protested in the street, talked incessantly about politics a...