# How the middle class can afford NY



## lokinyc (Sep 17, 2002)

I was walking around yesterday actually thinking to myself how clean NYC is. I really don't understand this persistent repuation dating back to the 70s and 80s that New York is dirty. For such a large, densely populated city, it's very clean.


----------



## bobbycuzin (May 30, 2007)

pretty much all the cleaning up happened in the past decade, not everyone has been to new york since then


----------



## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

I don't like the fact that areas where middle and working class are always viewed as blight. Even more, developers use this as an excuse to take away their homes to build some luxurious project that will cause the rest of the area to be priced out like the Atlantic Yds over in Brooklyn. There are a lot of people who work very hard in NYC, and most of them have to make long commutes either by car, train, or bus b/c of the fact that they can't afford to live there, while the rich are close to everything within walking distance, though they use their limos even for that. I know to some I sound like a communist, but I am tired of the populists always getting the royal screw job, while the rich always have it made for them.


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

lokinyc said:


> I was walking around yesterday actually thinking to myself how clean NYC is. I really don't understand this persistent repuation dating back to the 70s and 80s that New York is dirty. For such a large, densely populated city, it's very clean.


If you want to see a really clean big city, pick Tokyo or Osaka. Those cities are spotless, and makes New York look very dirty.


----------



## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

I do not think New York is terribly expensive. Think of what you are getting for that money. You do not need a car or a yard. When you live in Manhattan the world is your oyster. All the views, culture, opportunity, delicious smells, and chances to get laid. I say its worth every penny. London is expensive.


----------



## Christian urbanite (Jul 14, 2007)

My plan is to make millions of dollars were I live now. Then eventually, when I have enough money, I will move to Manhattan.


----------



## bobbycuzin (May 30, 2007)

philadweller said:


> I do not think New York is terribly expensive. Think of what you are getting for that money. You do not need a car or a yard. When you live in Manhattan the world is your oyster. All the views, culture, opportunity, delicious smells, and chances to get laid. I say its worth every penny. London is expensive.


actually manhattan is DAMN expensive compared to what it was last decade, and arguably a lot less interesting than any of the previous decades as well...it's becoming a place that only a certain type of people can afford and live in, as opposed to the "open to all" feel that gave the city its unique vibe in past years


----------



## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

*City Lost 6,000 Rent-Stabilized Apartments in '06*


BY TOM ACITELLI
PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 20, 2007

New York City lost an estimated 6,022 rent-stabilized apartments in 2006, according to a new report from the city's Rent Guidelines Board. Still, this represented 18 percent fewer rent-stabilized apartments than were lost in 2005.

The city now has roughly 1,043,000 rent-stabilized apartments, and 43,000 rent-controlled ones. Also, another 308,000 apartments fall under some other sort of regulation, and about 697,000 apartments are market-rate.

The net estimated loss of 6,022 rent-stabilized apartments came during a year of near-record home-planning in New York. The city issued 30,927 permits in 2006 for new housing units, the second most annually since 1972 (2005 being the top year since then).


http://www.observer.com/2007/city-lost-6-000-rent-stabilized-apartments-06


----------



## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

*Manhattan tops salaries at $2,821 per week*












Mon Nov 19, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) - At $2,821 per week, people in Manhattan earned three times the average U.S. wage in the first quarter of this year, boosted by financial sector bonuses, government statistics showed on Monday.

*Equivalent to nearly $147,000 per year, average weekly pay for Manhattan residents shot up 16.7 percent from the same period of 2006, maintaining its spot as the wealthiest county in the United States.*

*Nationally, the average rise was 5.1 percent to $885 per week, or $46,000 per year*, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

People in Manhattan, home to Wall Street, earned three to four times more than their neighbors in other New York City boroughs and almost five times more than workers in the state of Montana.

Manhattanites in the financial activities supersector made an average of $10,156 per week, or about $528,000 per year, largely because year-end bonuses and commissions are paid in the first quarter, the bureau said in a news release.

*Manhattan far outpaced the average wage in the boroughs of Queens ($831), the Bronx ($788), Brooklyn ($742) and Staten Island ($733), partially explaining its gentrification and economic discrepancies with the rest of New York City.*

After Manhattan, the country's top-ranked counties in the first quarter were Fairfield, Connecticut, a New York City suburb, at $1,979, followed by Suffolk, Massachusetts, which includes Boston, at $1,659, and San Francisco at $1,639.

Four of the 10 counties with the highest average wages were in the New York area, while three others were in and around San Francisco, near the Silicon Valley high-technology corridor.

Among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the capital Washington ranked first at $1,428 per week, followed by New York state at $1,397, Connecticut at $1,263, Massachusetts at $1,110 and New Jersey at $1,097.

The lowest weekly wages were in Montana ($600), South Dakota ($602), North Dakota ($615) and Mississippi ($616).

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by John O'Callaghan)


© Reuters 2006.


----------



## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

^ You could thank those Investment Bankers with their big fat bonuses for that. :lol: 



bobbycuzin said:


> actually manhattan is DAMN expensive compared to what it was last decade, and arguably a lot less interesting than any of the previous decades as well...it's becoming a place that only a certain type of people can afford and live in, as opposed to the "open to all" feel that gave the city its unique vibe in past years


Manhattan is expensive, no question about it...but the rents in Central London are more eye-popping, IMO.


----------



## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

hkskyline said:


> If you want to see a really clean big city, pick Tokyo or Osaka. Those cities are spotless, and makes New York look very dirty.


You are aware that those cities are overcrowded and forced to build clusters for its population as opposed to NYC.


----------



## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

I agree that Manhattan is becoming dull and less interesting. I preferred it in the 1980s and early 1990s. The West Side highway gay life was something else. I miss the grit and underground scenes.


----------



## outbackbox (Oct 12, 2007)

Excuse me, I have travelled and living in NY is no way any more expensive than living in Sydney - so get over this whole NY bashing expensive city crap! In fact, NY is a lovely and can be VERY cheap. Food, public transport is cheap, except for rents, which are same as everywhere else. NY has great quality of life that is affordable. You can do anything in NY, whereas in other cities, most things are too expensive and can only be enjoyed by the rich or well-off. Im sick of NY-expensive bashing. Go to other cities before you complain complain complain.


----------



## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

philadweller said:


> I agree that Manhattan is becoming dull and less interesting. I preferred it in the 1980s and early 1990s. The West Side highway gay life was something else. I miss the grit and underground scenes.


Unfortunately, CBGBs closed recently in NoHo and was replaced by another branch location for JP Morgan Chase.


----------



## tvdxer (Feb 28, 2006)

I'm no expert, but it seems what's really expensive in New York is housing, and perhaps groceries.

Otherwise, it's not that bad. You don't need a car, and a subway pass is only about $70 / month. There are a ton of cheap ethnic restaurants, and a lot of free / low-cost things to do.


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

TalB said:


> You are aware that those cities are overcrowded and forced to build clusters for its population as opposed to NYC.


Actually, no. Japan is a quake-prone country, and highrise living isn't a very predominant thing. In fact, I'd say the highrise landscape in Tokyo and Osaka is less so than New York. The density is lower and is spread out across a huge urban expanse. For a city like Tokyo, with 30 million+ people living around the bay, there are far more low and midrises than highrises. And even amidst the crowded areas they are still spotless.


----------



## koolkid (Apr 17, 2006)

Everyone sees Manhattan as THE place to live. "I can't wait to move there, omg."


I hope it stays that way if you know what i mean...


----------



## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

*Albany Bars Rent Rise for Thousands*










*Hector Cardona, at Columbus Manor on the West Side, said his rent would have risen to $4,500 from $981 
under a loophole that was closed last week.*


By MANNY FERNANDEZ
November 26, 2007

A loophole in New York State’s rent regulations that would have led to sharp rent increases for thousands of tenants was closed last week by housing officials.

The rule allowed landlords withdrawing from government subsidy programs to immediately bring the rent in their apartments up to market rate by claiming that exiting the programs created a “unique and peculiar” circumstance.

Normally, such landlords are limited in how much they can adjust rents each year. Citing the exception, *the owners of 23 buildings in New York City and Westchester and Nassau Counties had sought permission from the state to raise the rents to market levels in 4,400 units.*

In July, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Deborah VanAmerongen, the commissioner of the state’s housing agency, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, proposed clarifying the regulation, a move applauded by tenants, housing advocates and elected officials who said the increased rents in the affected buildings would have forced many residents to move out.

On Wednesday, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal officially closed the loophole by amending the regulation.

*Landlords of the 23 buildings were exiting the state’s Mitchell-Lama program. The program encouraged the creation of middle-income housing by offering owners low-interest mortgages and tax abatements, in return for caps on rents.* It was enacted in 1955 by the New York State Legislature and named in honor of the two legislators who sponsored it, Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred A. Lama.

*Both the old and new regulations apply only to buildings that were completed before 1974. Those buildings are required to move automatically into the rent stabilization system, which limits the size of rent increases. Buildings completed after 1974 can go to market-rate rents and require no state oversight.*

State housing officials said the “unique and peculiar” provision had been intended to permit rent increases in unusual situations, as when an owner sought to rent out a unit that had been occupied by a building manager or family member and therefore had an exceptionally low rent.

But tenant advocates said landlords of buildings leaving subsidy programs like Mitchell-Lama had been trying to use the provision for their entire buildings by claiming that withdrawing from the program itself constituted a unique and peculiar circumstance.

The new regulation says that justification can no longer be used.

“A lot of the residents of Mitchell-Lamas are seniors on a fixed income and disabled families who simply could not afford the increases that landlords were requesting,” said Ellen B. Davidson, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which supported amending the regulation.

Sue Susman, the tenant association president at Central Park Gardens at 50 West 97th Street, one of the buildings that had applied for increases, said that had the loophole not been closed, *her rent of $1,000 a month for a three-bedroom unit would have gone up to $5,275.*

At another affected building, Columbus Manor at 70 West 93rd Street, *Hector Cardona said rent for the two-bedroom unit he shares with his wife would have shot up to $4,500 a month from $981.*

“It’s astronomical, a jump like that,” said Mr. Cardona, 66, a retired union organizer and president of the tenant association. “We would have had to get out. We would have ended up upstate somewhere.”

Even before the regulation was clarified, no landlord had successfully used the loophole to raise the rents for a whole building. At a few buildings that had applied for increases under the provision, tenants had agreed to modest rent increases in negotiations with owners.

*Now, landlords of the 23 buildings will be sent a copy of the new regulation and must decide whether to revise or withdraw their applications*, said Greg Fewer, director of policy at the Division of Housing and Community Renewal’s Office of Rent Administration.

At a public hearing in September, Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents residential building owners, criticized state officials for characterizing the provision as a loophole.

“Rather than being some sort of illegal scam or nefarious scheme, this supposed ‘loophole’ has existed as a matter of law for over 30 years, and its use in this specific context has been upheld by the state’s highest court as recently as two years ago,” Mr. Posilkin said in his testimony.

In 2005, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the owner of a former Mitchell-Lama building on the Upper West Side, KSLM-Columbus Apartments, could apply for buildingwide rent adjustments under the provision. The owner later settled the rent dispute with tenants.

Mr. Posilkin said that owners of buildings withdrawing from Mitchell-Lama had the right to increase artificially low rents to pay for increased taxes and debt burdens, maintenance and “to ensure their continued economic vitality.”

The owners of four Manhattan buildings, including Columbus Manor and Central Park Gardens, sued the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, seeking to have a judge order the agency to grant their “unique and peculiar” applications. The owners argued that they were entitled to have their initial regulated rents reset to conform with the rents in the area. The suit was denied this year.

The new regulation takes effect as the number of buildings in the Mitchell-Lama program has dwindled rapidly in New York City in recent years, as more owners have opted out of the program to seek higher profits in the real estate market. *A report released in May by the Community Service Society, a liberal research and advocacy group, found that from 1990 to 2006, some 26,000 units in Mitchell-Lama rental developments, or 40 percent, had been lost in the city.*

*These days, much of the city’s moderately priced housing is built under the so-called 80-20 program, in which developers of new buildings reserve 20 percent of their apartments for low- or moderate-income households in return for state- or city-issued tax-exempt bonds.*

City officials and state legislators have also expanded the number of neighborhoods where developers are required to include apartments for low- and moderate-income tenants in order to receive tax breaks.












Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company


----------



## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

> NY is a lovely and can be VERY cheap.


Compared to London and Hong Kong, maybe. Compared to the rest of America, it's practically a foreign country and total rip-off insofar as cost of living goes. Especially when you go by the "Big Mac Index" (which compares the cost of living based upon the cost of lunch at Mc Donalds). How much does a Big Mac Meal cost in Manhattan now? I still remember my last trip to New York...

Me: I'll take a Big Mac Meal. No, I don't want to super-size it.

Cashier: That'll be $9.something

Me (horrified): Uh, I only want one.

Cashier (hands on hips): That *is* the price of one.

Me (feeling totally raped): Oh... (hands credit card to cashier)

Being in New York was like being trapped in an airport or stadium, where everything costs twice as much (or more).


----------



## pdxtex (Jan 3, 2007)

seattlehawk said:


> And that's why I detest public/subsidized housing. I find it unfair that do-nothing bums live right in the heart of NYC and London while your average, hard-working college educated middle-class citizen is shut out because he is not too wealthy to afford living there and he is not too poor to qualify for public housing. Not to mention the abuse of public housing, that is so widespread in the housing estates of UK.
> 
> That is why I say, let the market forces do the work!


yeah, but being college educated and middle class, you probably have more choices in where you can live. for many urban poor, the projects are their only choice...


----------

