| As any New Yorker can tell you, the city’s housing market can be a minefield, rife with dubious propositions, even scams. The schemes range from the relatively small, like a listing that fails to mention that a unit’s shower is located in its kitchen, to the genuinely criminal, like the elaborate fake-rental fraud described by the staff writer Tad Friend in “Crowded House,” from 2013. As Friend reports, Michael Tammaro, a photographer living in a spacious, high-ceilinged Chelsea loft, swindled dozens of people out of tens of thousands of dollars by continually advertising the apartment online, finding a would-be renter (often a foreigner or a busy executive), and collecting a large initial deposit. Tammaro would then construct a series of bold and dramatic lies (a sudden death in the family, a sudden ulcer, a head injury sustained while shooting the Olympic Games in London) to justify never letting the renter move into the apartment, all while he kept as much of the money as he could. Friend’s story details the circumstances that led Tammaro to start his elaborate shell game in the first place (fittingly, it stemmed partly from his inability to afford his N.Y.C. rent) and how his “renters” eventually unravelled his scheme. Tammaro’s dishonesty is, of course, appalling, but it’s also slightly awe-inspiring when one considers the sheer audacity required even to attempt such a con. At its heart, though, the story is also a reflection of the lengths people will go to find a home in New York City (hopefully with an in-unit washer and dryer). “With any given victim, Tammaro slowly shifted from an omnicompetent dazzler to a pitiable wretch buffaloed by circumstance,” Friend writes. “And in this, too, he represented Manhattan, the city that in dreams works beautifully and in daily life is a brutal gantlet.” | 
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