Famiglia amorosa vicino alla città

Joanne is awesome. She was a great host, very helpful, kind, and just all around friendly. My wife and I stayed with her for 5 nights while we visited all the sights in NYC. This review is to put our thoughts down and to allow you to know exactly what it was like for us when we stayed with her. Here were our pros and cons:

Pros:
--Joanne is a great, helpful host and the price you pay per night is very reasonable. Her son was very nice and respectful young man as well.
--You get a key to her place so you can come and go as you please
--She's very quick to respond to emails/texts/etc.
--She has wifi at her house and I did a speed test, it's fast (around 50 mbps)
--There is a bus stop about 20 feet from her front steps (that was VERY cool)
--It's about a 20-30 minute bus & train ride to get to Manhattan. So it's a good place to stay if you want a cheaper way to visit NYC.
--The room has a pretty big flat screen TV in it (probably around 40-50 inches). You can watch cable and such on it.
--She offered to let us use her computer but I had my laptop so we didn't need to
--She bought a bunch of bottles of water that we could use whenever we needed to
--There's free parking for your car on her street however, you'll have to move it every other day or so because of the street cleaners.
--She's cool with you using her fridge so you can put whatever you want in there
--We never did but I'm sure she would of been fine with us using her kitchen to cook as well
--Her cat is awesome, that is, if you like cats (:

Cons:
--There was no AC. On one of the days we stayed, it got in the 90's and it was really hard to sleep that night because of the heat.
--The unlimited weekly pass Metrocards do NOT work in New Jersey, only on the New York subway trains. When you get on a Path subway train (NJ Subway Train) you can't use your NYC Metrocard to ride it. To get to NYC you have to ride a bus to the main station called Journal Square, which costs you $1.30 each way and from the station you take a Path train (subway) into NYC which was $2.75 each way. Those fares starts to add up quickly.
--This may or may not bother you but when you do a search on homestay.com Joanne's house comes up as a whole apartment or house to rent. It really should be listed as a private room. Joanne and her son will be there while you stay since it's the house they live in. You don't get the whole house to yourself. We knew that going in and were fine with it, but I just wanted to make that clear here.
--Again, this may or may not bother you but you will be staying in Joanne's bedroom. She doesn't have a guest room so you'll be staying in her own personal bedroom with her stuff in it.
--You don't get the privacy that you would have in a hotel room since Joanne lives there. Granted, you have your own room, but you can hear her and I'm sure they can hear you
--It takes a while each day getting to and back from NYC from her house. Know that you'll be doing around 1-2 hours per day of traveling just to get to NYC and back to Joanne's house.
--The bathroom is really small. When you sit on the toilet the sink is right there in your face.
--This isn't Joanne's fault but people just don't take care of their neighborhood. Joanne's house is clean and very livable but her surroundings aren't so much. I feel bad saying this but I want to make sure people know exactly what this place is like. There's trash and litter in the street and gutters. People just didn't seem to have any pride in their neighborhood.
--This isn't Joanne's fault either but when we first arrived in the neighborhood it was a little unnerving. We aren't big city people but for us, and I don't mean to sound mean here, it had a little bit of a ghetto feel to it. In the end though, we got used to it, it was fine, it was safe, nothing ever happened to us, but when we first arrived in the neighborhood, it was a little daunting for us. I'm trying to be as honest here as I can be. This is nothing negative about Joanne.

In summary, we're glad we stayed, we had a great time and Joanne was a great host. There's just some things that may be deal breakers for people that were surprises for us. Hope this helps. Thank you Joanne for helping us create amazing memories on our trip to NYC!