Housing for UN and consulate interns in Midtown East

Fourteen minutes to the United Nations, on foot

The United Nations sits on First Avenue in the East 40s. Seton Residence is on East 40th between Lexington and Third. That is a fourteen-minute walk, straight east, on the same street.

The consular district runs through the same blocks — the East 40s and 50s hold a large share of New York's consulates and permanent missions, which means a placement at one of them is usually a walk rather than a commute.

Why this placement is harder to house than most

Three things stack up at once. The term is short — commonly two to six months, set by the programme rather than by you. The arrangements are frequently made from abroad, before you have ever seen the room. And a large share of the interns are not US residents, which means no domestic credit history and no obvious guarantor.

Any one of those makes a standard Manhattan lease awkward. Together they make it close to impossible, because the standard application asks for exactly the things an incoming international intern does not have.

What removes the obstacle

You rent a room from the building rather than taking on an apartment lease. That single structural difference is what removes the paperwork: no co-signer requirement, no joint liability with other residents, and no dependence on a US credit file.

Terms are weekly with a seven-night minimum, so a placement books for exactly its length. A four-month secondment is sixteen weeks, not a twelve-month lease with an eight-month problem attached to the end of it.

Booking from another country

Most of these arrangements are made before arrival, and the useful thing to know is that very little is required to hold something.

• Your arrival and departure dates, even approximate
• Which room type you are budgeting for
• An email address that works from wherever you are

What the placement costs to house

One weekly rate covering the room and everything that keeps it running — electricity, gas, heat, water, air conditioning, Wi-Fi and weekly housekeeping. No utility accounts to open in a country you have just arrived in.

• Deluxe Room — $525 a week, shared bathroom
• Studio Basic — $650 a week, en-suite
• King Studio — $745 a week, en-suite, and shareable as a twin at $372.50 each

The rest of the city, from a building that opens onto Grand Central

Grand Central is four minutes away, which matters for the parts of a placement that are not at the mission — a seminar downtown, a meeting in Midtown West, a weekend somewhere else entirely. Five subway lines and Metro-North from one station.

The one thing to know before arriving: there is no full kitchen in a room. Mini-fridge, microwave and kettle in the room, and a communal kitchen downstairs for anything that needs a hob.