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> Maybe not so good for those who were especially attached to either the vibrant city life or busy office life. I don't understand this reasoning. Was city lif
by spamizbad 6y ago
> Maybe not so good for those who were especially attached to either the vibrant city life or busy office life.
I don't understand this reasoning. Was city life not vibrant when rents were 1/3rd the price?
If anything, "hypergentrification" tends to have a sterilizing effect on city life.
To be honest I'm kinda looking forward to it. Nothing against HENRYs (High earners, not rich yet)... but their "cultural tastes" are both expensive and not for everyone.
- fludlight 6y agoWhat’s a HENRY?
- blaser-waffle 6y agoHigh Earners, Not Rich Yet decent salaries but not a lot of accumulated wealth, e.g. stocks, real estate, etc.
- cbhl 6y agoCan you expand the acronym HENRYs? Urban dictionary didn't come up with anything for me.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago"High earners, not rich yet (HENRYs) are individuals who currently have significant discretionary income and a strong chance of being wealthy in the future." The previous (somewhat derogatory) term was "Yuppie" ("young urban professional" or "young, upwardly-mobile professional") [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuppie
- RhysU 6y agoI always liked DINK: Double income, no kids.
- pmiller2 6y agoWell, when two HENRYs love each other very much, they do frequent move in together to become DINKs. ;) More seriously, DINK seems to be approximately the plural of HENRY in this context.
- loco5niner 6y agoExcept, I think that HENRY implies that they are not willing to adjust their extravagant lifestyle in order to become rich.
- closeparen 6y agoAs I understand it, HENRY is a term of art in marketing while yuppie is more colloquial.
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- paulgb 6y agoYes, I've been thinking of this the same way. As someone who plans to stay in NYC, I'm looking forward to a time when WFH is more normalized and people who live in cities are people who want to live in cities, not people who need to live in cities. It could be win-win for both types.
- pengaru 6y ago> people who live in cities are people who want to live in cities, not people who need to live in cities I'm not under the impression that the droves of techies riding free company shuttle buses from SF to Silicon Valley want to live outside of the city. Maybe that's a uniquely SF thing, as I believe Silicon Valley still employs more tech people than SF, despite SF becoming a tech hub itself post-mobile. People don't live in downtown SF because they need to, they already live there because they want to. People tend to leave expensive cities to start families.
- aianus 6y ago> People don't live in downtown SF because they need to, they already live there because they want to. Maybe downtown SF is just the lesser of two evils between SF and SV because of job location. Maybe they really want to be with their extended family in a suburb of Cleveland.
- pengaru 6y ago> Maybe they really want to be with their extended family in a suburb of Cleveland. This especially made me laugh because the VP of Eng at one of my Silicon Valley startups was from Cleveland and would often joke "I escaped a prison sentence by leaving Cleveland" and "The place is so polluted the river caught on fire, TWICE!".
- kyledrake 6y agoThat fire was in 1969. This is kind of like moving to SF because it used to have hippies. I've been to Cleveland and it's actually a pretty solid place to live. I would argue you could have a far better life there with a $50k house than slavishly working for the rest of your life for a multi-million dollar tiny home in a giant sprawled out suburb. FWIW I never met a single person in the bay area that didn't want to live basically anywhere else, but couldn't because of work (and access to work). I'm sure they're there but I never met them. Networking is going to be terrible during COVID too, which is arguably the best thing about being down there for a startup anyways. I just think people are going to be amazed at how much that place hollows out as more tech companies decide to permanently go remote. I loved the weather, but I also like not having to work as much to put a roof over my head. I'm sure that resonates with a lot of other people too, that don't think retiring early surrounded by friends and family is a prison sentence.
- ghaff 6y ago>Was city life not vibrant when rents were 1/3rd the price? Vibrant may not have been the best choice of words. But there have certainly been periods over the past few decades when life in major cities was more dangerous, grittier, less polished, etc. than it was today. e.g. Bryant Park in the 80s, Some may not consider that a negative.
- refurb 6y agoSF lost 25% of its population (800k to 600k) between 1950 and 1980. Cities were not very desirable back then.
- ghaff 6y agoAnd Boston was still losing population into the 90s. The last major "tech" employer of the era in the city, Teradyne, finally moved out entirely in the 2000s. My grad school cohort in the late 80s, many of whom worked for Boston area computer companies or in finance, basically none of them actually lived in the city. Which plays into a lot of the noise about city housing prices. Basically, the urge among young wealthy urban professionals to live in cities is mostly quite recent.
- christiansakai 6y agoI am a HENRY but my cultural tastes are low for most of my peers standard. McDonalds I'm lovin' it.
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- perl4ever 6y agoI've never lived in NYC, or made enough to have the option, but my lasting impression from every time I've visited is how easily you can find food that's exponentially better than McDonald's for comparably low prices. Of course, anything tends to be better when there's more traffic/volume and more competition.
- metalforever 6y agoYeah I agree with this . In NYC it’s not even that cheap.
- rpmisms 6y agoSame, man. I'm HENRY for my age (18), and really enjoy my $500 apartment, while parking an ancient Tesla outside it
- throwaway713 6y agoI always find it interesting how the people who are so strongly against the gentrification caused by the apparently bland and one dimensional tech workers are reluctant to move themselves to cheaper mid-sized cities that ostensibly have more “soul” if that’s what they’re looking for.
- mcntsh 6y agoMaybe because their life, family and friends are in the cities they're in? You can have attachments to the place you live in and resent gentrification at the same time.
- asveikau 6y agoMaybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years. They are really eager to see a trend out of small amounts of data. Or proclaim urban life dead, now and forever. I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life. We had the peak of urban crime in the 80s and 90s. Then we had a reversal of those trends. Yes gentrification is tough on many, yes the costs are out of control for many, but on the balance I think denser living is the right call.
- chrisco255 6y agoDoes denser living really matter if most of the business and professional jobs go remote? The traffic in my city (Austin) has plummeted dramatically since before Covid.
- asveikau 6y agoI believe there is economic research that says increases in density are correlated with larger increases in productivity. I also think the environmental cost is lower, for example if you're not burning fossel fuels in single occupant SUVs in order to do everything. My personal experience is also that avoiding that last part is good for your health, physical fitness and stress.
- kasey_junk 6y agoI’ve been a remote worker far longer than Covid and live in a dense (for the US) area. For me the density value comes from things that specifically can’t go remote. Having parks, beaches, produce shops, restaurants, schools and friends in walking distance is the value. Covid has proven those things can’t be replicated online.
- jackcosgrove 6y agoIf you have children it's not as if you can move anywhere even if your job allows it. Moving is traumatic for children and the places you can move to are those with adequate schools. The benefits of remote working are largely lost on those with children.
- kazinator 6y agoIndeed; hard to be vibrant if everyone is nothing but working to cover cost of living.
- sbierwagen 6y agoI believe ghaff is referring to COVID effects, not rent. Right now in most cities all bars, restaurants, theaters and nightclubs are closed. If you can only leave your Manhattan apartment to buy food, then you might as well be living in Poughkeepsie, and saving $5k a month in rent.
- ghaff 6y agoThat and even post-COVID a lot of those bars, restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs may not exist any longer.
- tartoran 6y agoMangattan has been partially a ghosttown even before the COVID pandemic. If you walk around Manhattan, almost half the commercial space is empty, it has been empty for the past few years actually and now getting worse. The bubble is popping On the other hand it might be a good idea to be on the move and buy/rent something cheap.
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoHave lived and worked in Manhattan for years, and this is an exaggeration. Retail vacancy rate is more like 12-15% in Manhattan, and lower than that city-wide. It’s a problem, but Manhattan was in no way a “ghost town” with half the stores empty before the pandemic.
- tartoran 6y agoIn the commercial sense a ghost town compared to 20 years ago when I first moved here. But yes, I think it’s not the right word. I don’t know any official figure but I’ve seen entire blocks half-occupied or even less than that (storefronts) about half a year ago when I ventured to Manhattan. I was shocked then and imagine it must be worse now. I was reading an article about the real storefront occupancy rate in Manhattan and it is not a known thing. Various realtors have their internal figures but they don’t share it with the world, so any figures may as well be inflated by them. The bubble is wobbly if you ask me
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoNot all HENRYs are the same, though many do lead upper middle class lifestyles. Some are frugal, most are not -- as is the general population. I speculate a preference for expensive taste in hobbies is developed before earning potential is realized. Though I'm a HENRY, I'm not into golf, expensive cocktails, etc.
- gfxgirl 6y agoWhat is your images of "hypergentrification" My experience with any gentrification is a place with almost nothing interesting to do or see gets renewed with new restaurants, bar, venues, etc... so a place that was boring with nothing to do suddenly has new an interesting things to do. Attracting new business brings in other things too like festivals, farmers markets, etc.. That's hardly "... tends to have a sterilizing effect on city life" but maybe you have a different experience.
- whytaka 6y agoI think the critique is simply the homogeneity of the people; mostly in terms of temperament. People with stable jobs, working hard, doing white collar things. Having white collar interests. 401Ks, keeping up with the Joneses, what rate did you get for your mortgage as dinner conversation and all that. It's really not as colourful as the melange of labourers and aspiring artists in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods with historical communities. These are gross caricatures, but my impression is that's why people don't like gentrification.