For 30 years, Ms. Denlinger rented a sunny fifth-floor walk-up in Manhattan Valley.
Ms. Ladin, 62 — the first openly transgender professor at Yeshiva University, where she taught English — suffers from myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
“I had not done any real estate hunting for 30 years,” Ms. Denlinger said.
To find her Manhattan Valley apartment, “I got a Village Voice, looked in the ads, called up the landlord and made an appointment.
“We needed two rooms that could be really separate, where one was not a bathroom or a kitchen,” Ms. Ladin said.