200 Brighton 15th street is a 6 story building located in the historic Brighton Beach neighbourhood of Brooklyn. It was built in 1951 and features 96 units (many of which have been subdivided) with access to a shared laundry, a live-in supermarket, an elevator and indoor and outdoor parking. Pets are allowed.

It is a few minutes’ walk from Brighton Beach Station, which services the B and Q lines and can take someone to Manhattan in about an hour. The same journey takes 30 minutes by car if there are no traffic delays.

Markus Chemnitz uses an illegal cellar studio apartment in the building as a bolt hole. Rented out at a third below regular market rates, it ‘inconveniently’ has no windows and payment of rent is in cash only. The corridor leading to the cellar studios can be accessed from the underground parking lot and a stairway that comes down from the ground floor and leads further down to the parking area.

The studio walls are thick foundation concrete but the door is made of wood. Hardwood floors and whitewash have been laid out to render the space more liveable. The space features a separate bathroom/shower, and a living room/kitchen/bedroom combination. The space has not been renovated since it was constructed, and Markus has purchased the second hand furnishings from the previous owners, an entrepreneurial Belorussian migrant couple who recently had a child.

Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighbourhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, along the Coney Island peninsula.

After World War II, the quality of life in Brighton Beach decreased significantly as the poverty rate and the ratio of older residents to younger residents increased. Due to the 1970s fiscal crisis, government workers and the middle class moved out to suburban areas, while people subdivided houses into single room occupancy residences for the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill. Brighton Beach suffers from arson as much as it does from constant drug trades. During the summer, however, people from all around the city go to Brighton Beach's beach next to the Atlantic Ocean.

In the mid-1970s, Brighton Beach became a popular place to settle for the Soviet immigrants, mostly Jews from Russia and Ukraine. So many ex-Soviets immigrated to Brighton Beach that the area became known as “Little Odessa” (after the Ukrainian city on the Black Sea).

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent significant changes in the social and economic circumstances of post-Soviet states are leading thousands of former Soviet citizens to immigrate to the United States. Many of those who primarily speak Russian are choosing Brighton Beach as a place to settle. A large number of Russian-speaking, immigrant-oriented firms, shops, restaurants, clubs, offices, banks, schools, and children's play centres opened in the area. The value of real estate in Brighton Beach is starring to rise again, even though drugs remain a social issue in the area.

Brighton Beach is considered a hot spot for the “Russian Mafia”. In the 1970s, the most notorious leg of the mafia was the Potato Bag Gang, which served as a robbery gang for larger Russian crime syndicates in New York City. Marat Balagula was a crime boss from Brighton Beach. The major Russian criminal element in Brighton Beach was the international Russian mafia group, known as vor v zakone or “vory,” and the first vory crime boss in Brighton Beach was Evsei Agron, who controlled the area's crime during the 70s and 80s until his death in 1985. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, many ethnic Russian criminals illegally entered the United States, coming especially to Brighton Beach. The infamous vor Vyacheslav Ivankov, who dominates the Brighton Beach underworld ¹⁾, arrived during this wave.

The area does have some cultural highlights. The Brighton Ballet Theater, established in 1987, is one of the most famous Russian ballet schools in the United States. More than 3,000 children have trained in ballet, modern and character dances, and folk dances here. A Russian-speaking theatre near the waterfront, the “Millennium Theater”, features performances by actors from the U.S., Russia, and other countries.