When Iria Leino, a Finnish-born painter, died at 89, the rent on her 4,000-square-foot loft in a former knitting factory in SoHo was $650 a month.

Ms. Leino (pronounced LAY-no) lived in the same building complex from 1966 until her death of leukemia in 2022. She moved to 133 Greene Street in 1966, when the district was a rubbly artists’ refuge. Later, she relocated to a sixth-floor unit in the building next door (both cast-iron structures were combined into a single co-op, 133-137 Greene Street, in the late 1970s. The entrance — and current address — is at 135 Greene Street). As high-fashion boutiques sprouted around her and her neighbors bought and renovated some of the most expensive property in the city, she collected the refunds from cans and bottles and later relied on subsidies from a charitable organization to stay afloat.