Wow have times changed.  I lived in a (much less nice) communal building in Bushwick, Brooklyn a few years ago and it was just $500 a month for a room.  As a newbie to NYC at the time, it was really great to jump into a fully formed community but after a while, it was just too much to be surrounded by people all the time.  You could tell others were having the same issues and people started to pick fights over silly things and it just became a very stressful experience.  This place is significantly nicer than where I stayed but I wonder how the issues that come with putting a large group of diverse people together in one space will be handled.