Housing lottery winner attacked on blogs

After the New York Times ran a story recently on a teacher and aspiring novelist who won a government-subsidized housing lottery for an Upper East Side co-op, the blog Curbed.com named him “the most hated man in New York.” Several comments posted on the blog attacked Matthew Thomas, who needed help putting together a $14,000 payment so he could move from his mother’s place in Bronxville to a Mitchell-Lama co-op on East 88th Street, between Second and Third avenues. “Why should an able-bodied young man who hails from a nice area and background be handed such a killer deal?” one post read. “This apartment should go to someone more deserving, not some twit who thinks he’s the next Ernest Hemingway.”