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The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mas

by ctvo 4y ago

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along in the city, across many cultures and backgrounds. I like it has some of the best food in the world. I think a lot of people are like me. No, we don't want to live in Boston, Chicago, or Washington DC (similar cities with mass transit). Unfortunately demand will continue to outpace supply greatly. The only alternative I have is moving further out in Brooklyn or Queens. Unfortunately the subway has decent coverage, but moves at a snail's pace, and I'm looking at 50+ minutes for 6 miles into the city.

EricDeb 4y ago
I feel like the main deterrent for boston and chicago is the weather but I could be wrong.
yieldcrv 4y ago
You and everyone else buddy, that's why you're going to be priced out just like the people before you. It's nice you enjoyed your ride from $2,000/month to $5,000/month. That range was absurd to the people that went through an earlier range, and so on and so forth.
weeksie 4y ago
My partner and I have been agonizing over this exact dilemma. We have an income number and an expenses number and when those cross a certain point, we've gotta go somewhere else. So there's a very good chance that we'll immigrate somewhere in a few years. But yeah, try as we might, we couldn't come up with another US city that either of us would want to live in.
- greggsy 4y ago
  To me, only other places that compare to NYC are Singapore and Sydney. Great food in Singapore, great weather (usually) in Sydney. The people can be a bit busy in Singapore though. Certainly no NYC, but they ticked all my recreation, arts, food, people and transport boxes. Unfortunately, they’re all so goddamn expensive to live in.
  - weeksie 4y ago
    I lived in Sydney for five years! Great city. Lived there before I came here. My partner and I are looking at Madrid. But yeah, there is no other city in the world that's going to be like NY. Maybe London but of course that has the same problems.
    - InCityDreams 4y ago
      * less guns. * not specifically talking about London, either.
  - te_chris 4y ago
    Singapore?? To New York????? Sorry what? Singapore is fine as far as a hot place with incredible food and good hotels to spend a few nights, but it’s also quite possibly the most boring major city I’ve been to outside of that and there doesn’t seem to be any cultural life beyond shopping - based on my own experience and that of friends who’ve lived there. I could also take issue with comparing Sydney to NY, but I’ll let that one go ;)
    - noobermin 4y ago
      In defense of sg, the only reason you said this is you never left orchard rd. You can experience worlds of culture just eating food at any given neighborhood coffee shop or going to a wet market in the morning. It just is a different culture, one that doesn't try to emulate America too much (hipster shit like live music or public art or things like that).
      - throwaway_4ever 4y ago
inglor_cz 4y ago
If you really like mass transit and want to live without a car, America is probably not for you. USA got rid of most streetcar systems a long time ago and rebuilding them from scratch in current NIMBY climate is basically impossible. And subways, which are much more expensive than ground transit, only make economic sense in several metropolises. Try some European city with reasonable rents like Warsaw. Even the skyscrapers will remind you of Manhattan. But yeah, learning Polish is not easy.
- paulgb 4y ago
  There’s no fundamental reason “America is probably not for” people who want high-quality, dense urbanism. The rent in NYC is a clear sign that there’s demand for it.
  - _jab 4y ago
    It’s also a sign there’s not sufficient supply of it. Hence that America as a whole sucks at mass transit.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    There is definitely demand, but America won't build that demand because the "silent majority" (homeowners who still are fearful of minorities and poor people) won't let that happen.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Depends on what you call "fundamental reason". Building new mass transport systems like light rail in existing cities from scratch requires a lot of political momentum, basically willingness to crush the pervasive NIMBY mentality and overcome the pull of bureaucratic inertia. Even in European cities that never dismantled their light rail systems, inhabitants often fight back against line extensions, citing noise concerns etc., and are able to delay the construction for years or decades. Plus such systems aren't cheap and usually require new subsidies on top of existing subsidies. You will still have to maintain the existing road system and bridges, their usage won't drop to zero or even a quarter of current traffic. Some people won't voluntarily switch to public transit ever, for all kinds of reasons. Maybe this isn't "fundamental", but IMHO the hurdles to overcome are really high and I am not sure if there is any city in the US willing to try this and having the means to do so.
TheDudeMan 4y ago
The city is safer?
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- paulgb 4y ago
  Despite the popular Murdoch-media narrative that big cities have become hellholes, yes. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new...
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    That Bloomberg article is a really interesting experiment in cherry-picking data: it focused specifically on deaths, and only on deaths due to specific causes that helped its case. Yes, New York has fewer homicides and car crash deaths than rural towns, but if you look at most other data, which is arguably more relevant, the opposite story shows up. I'm not that worried about being murdered. Murders tend to happen between people with a relationship. There are very few random murders. In cities, gangs do the murdering, and outside of cities, it is generally crimes of passion. The NYPD is very, very aggressive about going after gangs and murders. This is at the cost of controlling other types of crime. The car crashes are easy to explain: NYC is designed so that you drive very slowly, and there is a 25 mph speed limit everywhere a pedestrian might be. Crashes in NYC are almost always non-fatal. It's not that they don't happen. They are just non-fatal. Personally, I am worried about being mugged or harassed, and that is extremely common in NYC compared to most places. It also happens to be something that happens between unrelated people. That is why I moved out of NYC after having been attacked once and witnessing 2 thefts in 4 years, and that is why the statistics cited in that op-ed are completely useless.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    It's amusing that you bring up a mogul's "media narrative" and then cite a link from Bloomberg News. Michael Bloomberg is of course also a billionaire with his own empire and media company. This piece you are citing is from the Opinion section of Bloomberg News. Bloomberg itself being a company whose headquarters are in NYC and whose founder is Mike Bloomberg a NYC resident himself as well as being a 3 term mayor of NYC. The author of this opinion piece, Justin Fox is also a NYC resident. It's worth noting too that Bloomberg LP company famously does not allow remote work and owns the Bloomberg Tower, a 55 story commercial and residential skyscraper that takes up an entire city block in Midtown. Lastly Bloomberg himself is a polarizing figure since during his long tenure as Mayor he was widely seen as being in bed with big real estate development. His tenure as mayor was notable for the hyper development of luxury real estate. The types of "glass boxes" that are dark most of the year. For more background see: https://therealdeal.com/2019/11/26/love-hate-and-real-estate-bloombergs-record-may-polarize-voters/ https://therealdeal.com/2019/11/26/love-hate-and-real-estate...
throwk8s 4y ago
People that want to be conspicuous have to display their success where it's going to be seen. Living in a place that is "central" in so many ways is a competition to see who can hang in there. The only way to stay is to keep winning bigger.
- standardUser 4y ago
  What? Most people I know in Manhattan are just people with jobs who enjoy living in the city. There is no "displaying their success" or "keep winning bigger" mentality to be found in my sprawling NYC-based friend group. Sounds like something from TV or the movies.
  - throwk8s 4y ago
    > There is no "displaying their success" or "keep winning bigger" mentality to be found They may not realize the game they're in. But as long as the cost of living keeps hitting new peaks, inevitably people need to bring in more money, or move farther out or elsewhere. Supply is limited, and it is a competition.
    - standardUser 4y ago
      "They may not realize the game they're in." And the award for Most Condescending Comment goes to... But in all seriousness, this has always been happening. NYC is NYC because the cost of living keeps hitting new peaks, over and over, generation after generation. The same with so many high-demand cities. That's how they got to be such massive, dense cities to begin with. We're all just riding the wave.
      - throwk8s 4y ago
        > And the award for Most Condescending Comment goes to... I probably could have phrased that better. In any case I don't think what we're saying is incompatible. One has no choice but to keep up with the cost of living. My point is that the cost of living in a massively "central" city is defined by a lot of people driven to succeed and be seen succeeding, whether or not that's the mentality of one's group of friends.
SkipperCat 4y ago
I live in Brooklyn and feel the same way. Even if you discount all the empty luxury apartments held by foreigners who never show up, there are still tons of people who want to move here. Why?, because when you have all these people crammed together - weird stuff happens and that's what makes NYC magical. We're constantly mixing together, in the subways, bars, restaurant, parks ,etc. You get to see firsthand all the humanity of this city. No other city in America has replicated that.
- neon_electro 4y ago
  I won't argue/disagree with you as far as NYC's comparably higher degree of what you describe, but having lived in Philadelphia's core, there's plenty of the mixing magic happening in other cities, but it's definitely not "the same".
  - namose 4y ago
    Philly is also probably the closest approximation to NYC in this way. Most other cities in the US are so segregated that wealthier neighborhoods feel like suburbs (looking at DC and Boston here).
    - eatonphil 4y ago
      Check out Eastern Queens. :) It's indistinguishable from wealthy suburbs (and wealthy Nassau County) to me.
simonsarris 4y ago
> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest of America". Some crime stats: https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 edit: NYC has 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, which is 45% more violent than the USA median (4.0). I have no idea how 45% more violent got a reputation as "safer than the rest of America" but it's not true.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Why would crime stats be expressed by square mile? To purposefully make NYC look bad?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - neogodless 4y ago
    The other graph is Per Capita. And while this reminds me of XKCD: Heatmap[0], the density of crime also matters when it's where you live, and the actual proximity you are to frequent violent crimes. [0] https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- orange_joe 4y ago
  NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC, and probably live/work/eat within a 1.5-2 mile range). p.s. I really like your content!
  - simonsarris 4y ago
mushufasa 4y ago
Having grown up in DC and New York, I would say more strongly that there's no other city in the USA that has comparable mass transit. The way I would put it is -- in New York, it is more of a hassle to have a car than to go without. In all those other cities, while there is some mass transit, you will find yourself wanting a car.
- flatline 4y ago
  DC is still easier to navigate by car than by metro and bus, at least when I last lived there in 2016. Red line from MD would regularly shut down or have delays, and you were looking at a 2+ hour commute into the district. If you could get a parking spot you could reliably beat metro by about 10 minutes with much less variance. And you cannot navigate a circumferential route in a reasonable time, the purple line is the first to really attempt this and is like a drop in the bucket. If you live and work in the city it’s doable, but cross a river or the beltway and it’s really not. I had friends in Baltimore that could not get by without a car either, and they made a really dedicated effort. Mass transit in the US - outside of NYC - is just not viable at scale.
  - jnwatson 4y ago
    Metro being within 10 minutes of driving is quite good. Coming from the silver line, you’d be lucky if you can get within 30 minutes. Parking is such a dice roll in DC that using a car for intra-city travel is not efficient. Lots of DC residents don’t have cars; most housing doesn’t include parking.
- ghaff 4y ago
  What's pretty much unique about NYC, especially Manhattan, in the US is that there's no cultural expectation that a well-paid professional will own a car. By comparison, people can get by without owning a car in Boston/Cambridge--I did as an undergrad--but get out of school and a lot of your friends probably live in the suburbs/exurbs, you need a car to head off to the mountains, etc. Sure, you can rent and Uber up to a point but most people find it 1.) gets old and 2.) As a practical matter means they mostly just stay in the city because doing otherwise is too much of a hassle.
paxys 4y ago
Agree with everything except the last part. Brooklyn is a fantastic place to live, and takes 20 mins or so door to door to get to most parts of Manhattan.
- ctvo 4y ago
  The rent in areas adjacent (downtown Brooklyn included) to Brooklyn Heights is nothing to sneeze at. You're looking at equal or higher prices to Manhattan. Even areas further away, like Prospect Heights or Crown Heights, with decent access to transportation have seen quite the uptick in price and availability.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  20 minutes to most parts of manhattan?!?! I'm sorry, but... you might be able to get to FiDi from downtown BK in 20 minutes, door to door. If you live anywhere else in BK, from Greenpoint to Sheepshead Bay, you're looking at 30 minutes minimum to get into manhattan -- probably closer to an hour door-to-door. Not trying to be rude here, but your statement does not seem to match my lived experience. Maybe you can get 20 minutes door-to-door on a citibike?
wnolens 4y ago
I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle. It really comes down to fear of change I think. Humans are very adaptable, and the same one can thrive in car-centric suburbs as they would in shoulder-to-shoulder metropolises. Given no constraints, you prefer city. But throw in kids (requirement for more space/better schools), or a dream job (passion), or a dying parent (obligation), or a lover.. and suddenly you're building a life in a completely different place. And it works. At least I think/hope.. because outside of a busy city I am irritable and sad. But it sure would be nice to slow down on the treadmill/rat race a bit..
- kortilla 4y ago
  > Given no constraints, you prefer city. That’s definitely not a given. I know a bunch of people that given no constraints they would live at the edge of a lake with the nearest city being 100+ miles away. But they get forced into a city by the need for a job, or the same constraints you laid out.
  - mortehu 4y ago
    "you" refers to GP, so it's literally given.
- neilparikh 4y ago
  > I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle. Just out of curiosity, what do you think NYC has that Toronto or Seattle don't have? And what are you thoughts on Toronto vs. Seattle? Personally, I've lived in Toronto (which I loved), and visited Seattle for a few days (which I liked, but hard to say from a short visit), so curious to hear what others who have lived in all 3 think (especially since I'm planning to move to Seattle soon).
  - sushxbehshx 4y ago
jandrese 4y ago
You are clearly not alone. Skyrocketing rents are a symptom of more people wanting a place to live than there are available spaces. It's not like NYC is bereft of skyscrapers either.
- tmaly 4y ago
  NPR was talking about the lack of housing across the US today. Their solution was to get involved with zoning meetings and work to change the zoning laws.
tmaly 4y ago
Train from White Plains is only like 30 min, but yeah it is a much different vibe.
bogomipz 4y ago
>"I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America." Is there any data to back this up? The latest NYPD crime statistics, show a city with increasing crime. "Overall index crime in New York City increased by 27.8% in May 2022 compared with May 2021 (10,414 v. 8,149). Each of the seven major index crime categories saw increases, driven by a 42.1% increase in grand larceny (4,116 v. 2,897); a 28.3% rise in burglary (1,239 v. 966); and a 26.2% increase in robbery (1,506 v. 1,193)." See: [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00050/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-may-2022 https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00050/nypd-citywide-cri...
dangus 4y ago
Before I start with my comment, I'll remind everyone that averages skew very high when there are outliers. NYC has a high quantity of extremely high rent tenants. I wish more news articles used medians and median per capita when discussing rents. The main point I want to make: even with those high rents, we tend to forget how much our cars cost us, directly and indirectly. Directly: AAA's average new car TCO is close to $10,000 a year. Multiply by two for a typical couple and that's $1600 a month you could dump into your NYC apartment's high rent. Unlimited MTA rides only cost $1500/year/person. Indirectly: There's the obvious car crash issue, the top killer of children (well, guns just passed that, but luckily NYC is safer than the average American city in that regard), but the other main example is health. We're not supposed to sit all day. My doctor moved from a car suburb to the city and admitted they lost weight and walk a lot more. When walking is the easier option compared to attempting to drive to your daily errands, it's much better for you and extends your life, especially when considering your high-quality years of life. Number one premature killer is heart disease, by far. Even if you're just walking to the subway, that's a lot more activity than your commute to your garage. NYC's obesity rate is half of the national rate. HALF! That's downright incredible. In NYC I see very old people walking everywhere, stereotypically playing chess in the park, meanwhile I have suburban relatives struggling to walk across the Walmart parking lot and they haven't even hit 70 years old. They may live into their 80's but it will not be pleasant for them. The difference in alertness is noticeable. As a bonus, old people in NYC never had to drive so they never have a retired life feeling isolated to their home. I think the best way to try and stabilize rent is to buy a condo. It's not a silver bullet due to property taxes and HOA fees that rise with inflation, but it's still a slower rise than renting, I think. You can definitely find 2 bedroom condos with monthly payments under $5000 in Manhattan. If you're interested in what NYC apartments are really like and how far your money gets you (along with some general YouTube vlogging entertainment), a channel I recommend is Cash Jordan. I won't link it but I'm sure you can find it. Like any other real estate market, it's all about compromises. If you want to live in NYC and pay $1000/month/person, you can definitely do it. You can also pay $10,000/month if you want. The big caveat to everything I'm saying is that the poor are unlikely to live in the most walkable areas, and a lot of them will perhaps have to own a car. This is definitely the case in Chicago, where the most walkable areas are also the most desirable and affluent (I wonder why that is? Maybe our whole country would be more desirable and affluent if it wasn't designed to be a cash funnel where we dump our income into constructing vehicles, maintaining the infrastructure and utilities utilities of nearly unused land, and burning oil?)
FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
You just need to gentrify Newark. The PATH is faster than the subway from Brooklyn/Queens.
thehappypm 4y ago
I see Boston as the tech hub of the East more than NYC. New York obviously has a large number of tech jobs, but Boston and DC both have a higher concentration of tech; in NYC the big fish is obviously finance. I discount DC a little because a lot of that is government and defense related (not a bad thing, just not my cup of tea). Boston has a lot of diversity in tech, lots of health/pharma like Moderna, web companies like TripAdvisor and Wayfair, robotics like Boston Dynamics, tons of startups doing ai/ml, and it seems like every big company has a substantial presence here (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce…)
- dayvid 4y ago
  Boston's interesting in that it feels more low-key than NYC or Silicon Valley. Most of the biotech companies feel a lot more secretive and I don't see as many public events. The valley has a vibe in that everyone you meet is involved in tech work in some way and will talk about it to you or in public. It doesn't feel that way here, or you have to be a part of certain circles maybe. There are some small biotech meetup groups, but maybe they all do communication at the universities?
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    That vibe definitely exist, in Cambridge and Somerville, and maybe the Seaport, where the tech folks love to live. Everyone in Camberville seems to be in tech or tech adjacent.
    - jghn 4y ago
      In my neighborhood the branded swag has shifted from mostly tech to mostly biotech over the last several years.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        A lot of computer-related tech (and defense sector) in the Boston area has historically been out in the suburbs, e.g. the "Route 128" companies. After Teradyne moved out, there was very little tech presence left in the actual city. That shifted with biotech/pharma and, more recently, with companies in the Seaport and Cambridge and the outposts of the big West Coast-HQd companies. But a lot of the tech industry is still well to the West and North of the city.
legohead 4y ago
Have you been affected by the rent increase yet? Curious how much power the landlords have there. Can they raise your rent without warning, are they trying to force you out, etc.
- frutiger 4y ago
  They can't push you out. In uncontrolled apartments, the rent gets renegotiated at the end of every lease term (usually 1 or 2 years). There are exceptions for rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments, where the landlords have even less power on price setting.
- stomczyk09 4y ago
  Not personally. I know some of my friends have been who moved back well after the "Covid Discounts" were a thing, got a little bit of an inflated deal, and now are facing like at least 3k for 1 bedrooms in places like around Williamsburg & Lower Manhattan(west village, soho, etc.). That's one of the better case scenarios I've heard as well. Truly a shame :(
mupuff1234 4y ago
An escooter might be a good transportation choice.
sparc24 4y ago
Everyone should spend a couple of early years in NYC. You'll be better off for it even you end up moving to New Hampshire.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Eh. I spent a summer there once. Admittedly in the 80s and admittedly as a relatively poor student intern. I like visiting NYC for a few days every now and then but I couldn't wait to get out at the time.
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  I’m not sure this scales
Aunche 4y ago
Part of the problem is that most people would rather move to an existing desirable city than try to improve their own to make it more desirable, myself included. In most major cities, less than 20% of people vote for mayor, let alone city council. Most of those who do vote in local elections are much old. http://whovotesformayor.org/ http://whovotesformayor.org/
- acchow 4y ago
  The goal posts keep moving tho. Even if your city becomes closer to NYC circa 2010, NYC is moving towards becoming a totally different beast of NYC circa 2030. There will always be a massive gap
- dgunay 4y ago
  I don't blame them. It can take decades for the kind of change that urbanists want to fully play out, and I bet they would rather experience good city life while they can enjoy it.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Exactly. The bike lane network plan in LA county has been on the books for 10 years now and its still a patchwork mess in the second largest city in this country where you could realistically bike to work every day of the year. There is no hope elsewhere for change. If you don't already have it you won't ever have it or you will be beating sand until you die fighting for a mile of bike lane or a single train line that waits at red lights.
    - Aunche 4y ago
      That kind of proves my point though doesn't it? There is a definite demand for bike lanes. However, civic participation is abysmal for everyone but the elderly who tend to be NIMBYs. If more people pitched in, we wouldn't have to rely the efforts of a few hyper-dedicated individuals.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
iancmceachern 4y ago
Move to SF. Having lived here and Manhattan I think many of the things you like about NY are present here. Just don't listen to the headlines.
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  As someone who has also lived in both places (and lives in neither of them currently), I'd have to vehemently disagree. SF is not only comparably expensive, it's also incredibly far behind in transit, far more homogeneous in all sorts of ways, much less culturally interesting and significant, and- despite my agreeing that the headlines are blowing it out of proportion- pretty clearly headed in the wrong direction overall. It has some potential advantages (weather, proximity to nature, stronger tech job market), but I relate to the OP comment a lot, and for me SF just cannot even slightly compare to NY. Obviously this is all just my opinion! I know tons of people love it there.
time_to_smile 4y ago
I'm confused what the "problem" is, is it that things you really like are expensive? I really like driving a Porsche, but it would seem a bit odd to lament a wild increase in new Porsche prices or my salary not keeping up with owning one as a "problem". I also really like that in Paris you can affordably get a glass of real champagne with every meal, but I hardly consider it a "problem" that in the US this isn't really reasonable. Things are getting more expensive, for some people that means they can't eat steak as much as they like, for others it means they need to move in with their parents, for you it means you might not live in the heart of one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the world. I've always found it a bit odd that in the tech community there is this assumption that people have the right to live wherever they want, and that somehow living in NYC or SF during it's prime isn't its own variety of luxury good. I enjoy champaign when I'm in Paris, and am glad that at least for today I can drive a Porsche. I've spent plenty of years in a beat-up old Ford and drinking yuengling, won't be terribly surprised if I spent plenty more doing the same in the future.
g9yuayon 4y ago
Sounds we should really build walkable city with convenient mass transit in the US and Europe. It's a shame that building anything infrastructure in the US is prohibitively expensive.
- zjaffee 4y ago
  Building single family homes is much cheaper in the US because of prefabrication. It's something like 3x less per square foot than a 5/1.
mynameishere 4y ago
I'm picturing this guy riding around on a New York City subway car and thinking to himself "Yep, this is worth $5,000 a month."
samstave 4y ago
What % of available living space is not lived in, and further what % is owned by foreign nationals. I know that in MANY countries, one is precluded from owning any property if not a citizen. Obviously this leads to a bunch of corruption issues with bribing and marrying nationals for access to property, but the USA has literally zero control on property ownership. You know how much foreign money laundering is done through US property ownership? MOST of it. A vertical zoning law might be an option: There are places like Singapore where you cant build a high-rise unless the subterranian aspects of the project dont include a connection to other sub services, like the walkway malls and such. I say do a % split on a vertical level which must include subterranian levels as a course: The building MUST include underground parking, a commerical section and a range of income level sections. You cant just build a high-rise of $millions apartments. Look at Millennial Tower in SF. What a disaster. I HUGE legal BS and not a single person with a net worth of south of 10 million was accommodated in that disaster - but it still cost the city (i.e. tax payers who are NOT worth >10 million -- millions of dollars.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  My quick google says 4% of apartments are vacant in nyc. Got to believe the vast majority of that is structural vacancy while landlords clean units and look for new tenants. feels like a none issue to me.
  - samstave 4y ago
    Nit: 4% of "apartments" - means "apartments that are available from landlords seeking to rent to rentors and likely consitute the available inventory that is unable to churn, due to already being either overpriced, or shit-holes nobody wants to live in." this is a different metric than: What % of luxury "apartments" are uninhabited in extremely high cost situations where an average person isnt renting the "apartment" - but laundering money by owning such place and paying a tax placeholder fee... And in addition CHURN What % of apartments are experiencing churn and whilst during so, what is the rent increase on each new wave of tenants... This would be a really intresting tower defence game. You are the landlord/super/scumlease You have apartments that will constantly dwindle in desireability so you have upkeep. You can accept the upkeep cost, or, for a lesser price, evict the current tenant and accept a new tenant at a fraction of the upkeep cost to keep revenues going into the future with % rates you like that keep you slum lord-ship going... or you kill them all, demolish and build a new building gentrify the neighborhood and blame it on rats, older policies etc... We need a TRUMP LORD 2000 NYC SIM module. Instead of installing new sewar, water, fire PREVENTION systems You are needed to install new RAT, SUPER, COP-INTERFERENCE-BRIBERY schemes to keep your shit going... Like the trump Water Heater Scandal. (this buildingz gunnaz needz a newz water heatahz... My cousin tony iz dah only guyz who gunna do dis Pay mah kidz what dez needz be paid, and you can stay) --- THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENED IN NYC
TuringNYC 4y ago
How much of the rising rents are risk premia for future cases of "government says you dont have to pay rent and cant be evicted" that we experienced in 2020-present? I'm curious if there has been a Natural Experiment comparing rent increases in places which did vs didn't have eviction moratoriums during COVID.
zjaffee 4y ago
As someone who grew up in NYC, the only lasting appeal to me is family and specific ethnic culture that is much less in every city in the US that isn't NYC. The apartment I grew up in, in lower manhattan, today would cost more than 20-30 times what my parents paid for it in the 90s, and it wasn't a nice apartment. There was no laundry in the unit, it faced a dark courtyard, the tempurature of the apartment was never that comfortable, had yearly huge bug infestations, but it was in a great location and was about 5 rooms more or less. I think people just romanticize a life different than the one they grew up with. I certainly miss some aspects of the city culturally, but life on the west coast, I've had considerably better living arrangements ever since I've graduated college than the one I grew up in, and my parents were both professionals with graduate degrees, it's even worse for a lot of other people.
- thex10 4y ago
  I grew up in NYC, in an even worse apartment. Despite no longer having family there, I would return in a heartbeat. I loved it and wish I could raise my kid there (in a better apartment, mind you)
  - zjaffee 4y ago
    If I could have a better apartment there I would absolutely consider moving there. The issue is that I'd have to live somewhere that would be considerably worse, and me and my partner make many times more than my parents did when they bought their place when adjusted for inflation.
ryukafalz 4y ago
As someone who currently lives in Philly… yeah, I feel this. I love being able to get around on foot and by transit, but Philly is still a pretty car-centric place compared to what I’ve seen of NYC, and I wish it weren’t. That plus making it easier/safer to get around by bike/scooter/etc. That’s something even NYC doesn’t seem to do well; have to look at international peers to see good examples of that.
filmgirlcw 4y ago
As a New Yorker who had to move to Seattle for a job five years ago and misses the city every single day, I totally agree with you. I will say, depending on how close you are to a train station, Brooklyn isn’t bad. Yeah, it’s 45 minutes door to door, but you get to walk and listen to podcasts or whatever on the train. As commutes go, it’s definitely doable. But I totally agree with you that many people don’t want to live anywhere else and people who don’t love New York might not understand that, but New York is different from every other major city in the US. I’m still carless in Seattle (I don’t drive and have no desire to drive) but it’s so much harder (my husband does have a car but I can’t rely on that for my own needs). And although Seattle is somewhat cheaper than Brooklyn (it’s really not but my luxury building in Capitol Hill definitely costs less than a luxury building in Williamsburg foot for foot — I pay about 70% more in Seattle than I did in Brooklyn, however), the things I’ve lost compared to New York are massive. I’ve definitely considered moving back now that I’m at a fully-remote company (that does have office space in NYC), but there are some practical realities about being in Seattle for my job that makes that hard. Maybe when my lease is up next year, I’ll reassess.
dcow 4y ago
Just to provide a 3rd party reaction here: it sounds like you've circularly reasoned yourself into a trap of your own making. You don't want to live anywhere else because you like NYC. Because no other city is exactly like NYC, you aren't interested in living anywhere else. The reason it's "circular" is because there are cities with good transit, good arts, great food, have a tech scene, and even have financial districts and you'd be surprised to find out how well diverse cultures get along in a log of smaller towns across the US (far fewer racial/cultural over/under-tones) and how safe they are (safer than NYC). Yeah, no other place is the center for any of these things save SF being the tech nexus and maybe having better renditions of some types of cuisine. So if you have to be in the center of the world, then yeah, you're not going to find other centers of the world. For me, personally, I'm disappointed by how few world cities the US has. NYC and Chicago are really it. My silly benchmark for what makes a city a world city is that it operates 24hrs a day (at least parts of it). Chicago barely does but I think it counts. Everywhere else in the US just dies past 10pm and especially past 2am.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  I think your last point is an interesting arbitrary distinction, if you're going to make one. While Vancouver is pretty well regarded as a NA city with pretty decent transit infrastructure and other nice qualities, it does basically close after 2am which isn't as nice as a night owl. Transit stops almost completely around that time too. Edit: None of this comment was meant to detract, just a comparison in agreement to the city I'm nore familiar with. Maybe Toronto's different
- nradov 4y ago
  That seems like a silly criteria. How many people really care about doing things at 3:00 AM? We're talking about a small niche of shift workers and childless young people. Las Vegas operates 24 hours a day if that's what you want.
  - dcow 4y ago
    Have you lived in or visited a world city? The feel and vibe is very different. It's why New York is called the city that never sleeps. When you get dense enough, there's always something to do and people out wanting to do it or at least wanting to serve it to you.
hardwaregeek 4y ago
I have a fantasy where a Robert Moses-type figure builds out super fast trains that connect Long Island, NJ, upstate New York, and effectively urbanize the entire tri-state area. New York becomes this super city where you can go from White Plains to the tip of Long Island in an hour. Housing becomes cheaper as neighborhoods that were previously impractical become feasible for New Yorkers. Car ownership drops in the outer suburbs as people embrace public transportation. Gentrification stays an issue but because of more housing, it's less brutal. Unfortunately this is pretty unlikely unless there happens to be another political genius like Moses who also happens to love public transportation. Maybe an Andy Byford-Robert Moses combo?
- m_ke 4y ago
  I’d love to see someone brave enough to marge north east jersey and lower Connecticut into NYC and connect them with proper transit, pretty much merge LIRR, Path and MTA under one NYC administered transit system, then add some high speed rail along the old train lines. Then make all public transit free and turn half of the roads into bus, pedestrian and bike only paths.
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tfbkggjjji 4y ago
Are US cities the only options? Why not move to London or something?
fritztastic 4y ago
I went to NYC many many times when I lived in New England, my cousin went to school there and took the train down multiple times a week for years, her mother worked and lived there for decades, my father went there every week for work for many years. Anecdotally our experiences have been that the city is generally safe, none of us have any crime stories to tell. My parents also used to go there a lot in the 90s and the city has come a long long way since then- for the better.
xwowsersx 4y ago
There are many, many places to live with crime rates far lower than NYC so I'm not sure I really understand this. Maybe you mean compared with most places you could see yourself living? For example, I live in a nice town in CT and the crime rate is 3.99 per 1000 vs NYC which is currently about 13.3 per 1000, making NYC (as a whole — I understand your point about neighborhoods within the city) 3x higher in crime. I understand the other things you appreciate about the city. It's great to able to walk outside and have amazing restaurants and other amenities a few feet away; there's a reason many people like the city.
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tails4e 4y ago
Honestly don't get what is so special about NY... It's not bad, but on the flipside is pretensious, expensive, and difficult to travel to/from.... also all of the things you mention that are positive points are by no means unique to new york.
timbo1642 4y ago
obiefernandez 4y ago
Have you considered Mexico City?
justWells 4y ago
This reads like a silly NY maximalist without really any context of the rest of the country. New York is cool and all but I’m not paying 60k in rent to live somewhere marginally better then a handful of major cities in the country. I moved to the PNW and the idea of living in a city now seems insane
2143 4y ago
> I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along in the city, across many cultures and backgrounds. I like it has some of the best food in the world. Isn't most of that true for most large cities anywhere in the world? Consider Amsterdam. - Mass transit? Yes. - Not owning a car? Sure. - Safer than America. - Tech hub, yes. - Finance hub? uhh, does it really matter? - Everybody gets along, across many cultures. - Food? Depends on your taste, but all kinds of cuisine are available. Or consider Singapore/London/Gothenburg/Paris/Toronto/so-many-others. Similar deal. Sometimes even a better deal, depending on your priorities. Of course, I fully agree that NYC is a cool place :)
- iskander 4y ago
  NYC is pretty much the only quasi-European larger city in the US, and in North America maybe only Mexico City and Montreal are comparable. Boston and DC are more influenced by cars but still have a large fraction of the city that's walkable. The effect of cars on urban fabric is very depressing elsewhere in the US.

by ctvo 4y ago

EricDeb 4y ago

I feel like the main deterrent for boston and chicago is the weather but I could be wrong.

yieldcrv 4y ago

You and everyone else buddy, that's why you're going to be priced out just like the people before you. It's nice you enjoyed your ride from $2,000/month to $5,000/month. That range was absurd to the people that went through an earlier range, and so on and so forth.

weeksie 4y ago

My partner and I have been agonizing over this exact dilemma. We have an income number and an expenses number and when those cross a certain point, we've gotta go somewhere else. So there's a very good chance that we'll immigrate somewhere in a few years. But yeah, try as we might, we couldn't come up with another US city that either of us would want to live in.

greggsy 4y ago
To me, only other places that compare to NYC are Singapore and Sydney. Great food in Singapore, great weather (usually) in Sydney. The people can be a bit busy in Singapore though. Certainly no NYC, but they ticked all my recreation, arts, food, people and transport boxes. Unfortunately, they’re all so goddamn expensive to live in.
- weeksie 4y ago
  I lived in Sydney for five years! Great city. Lived there before I came here. My partner and I are looking at Madrid. But yeah, there is no other city in the world that's going to be like NY. Maybe London but of course that has the same problems.
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    * less guns. * not specifically talking about London, either.
- te_chris 4y ago
  Singapore?? To New York????? Sorry what? Singapore is fine as far as a hot place with incredible food and good hotels to spend a few nights, but it’s also quite possibly the most boring major city I’ve been to outside of that and there doesn’t seem to be any cultural life beyond shopping - based on my own experience and that of friends who’ve lived there. I could also take issue with comparing Sydney to NY, but I’ll let that one go ;)
  - noobermin 4y ago
    In defense of sg, the only reason you said this is you never left orchard rd. You can experience worlds of culture just eating food at any given neighborhood coffee shop or going to a wet market in the morning. It just is a different culture, one that doesn't try to emulate America too much (hipster shit like live music or public art or things like that).
    - throwaway_4ever 4y ago

inglor_cz 4y ago

If you really like mass transit and want to live without a car, America is probably not for you. USA got rid of most streetcar systems a long time ago and rebuilding them from scratch in current NIMBY climate is basically impossible. And subways, which are much more expensive than ground transit, only make economic sense in several metropolises. Try some European city with reasonable rents like Warsaw. Even the skyscrapers will remind you of Manhattan. But yeah, learning Polish is not easy.

paulgb 4y ago
There’s no fundamental reason “America is probably not for” people who want high-quality, dense urbanism. The rent in NYC is a clear sign that there’s demand for it.
- _jab 4y ago
  It’s also a sign there’s not sufficient supply of it. Hence that America as a whole sucks at mass transit.
- noobermin 4y ago
  There is definitely demand, but America won't build that demand because the "silent majority" (homeowners who still are fearful of minorities and poor people) won't let that happen.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Depends on what you call "fundamental reason". Building new mass transport systems like light rail in existing cities from scratch requires a lot of political momentum, basically willingness to crush the pervasive NIMBY mentality and overcome the pull of bureaucratic inertia. Even in European cities that never dismantled their light rail systems, inhabitants often fight back against line extensions, citing noise concerns etc., and are able to delay the construction for years or decades. Plus such systems aren't cheap and usually require new subsidies on top of existing subsidies. You will still have to maintain the existing road system and bridges, their usage won't drop to zero or even a quarter of current traffic. Some people won't voluntarily switch to public transit ever, for all kinds of reasons. Maybe this isn't "fundamental", but IMHO the hurdles to overcome are really high and I am not sure if there is any city in the US willing to try this and having the means to do so.

TheDudeMan 4y ago

The city is safer?

sieabahlpark 4y ago
paulgb 4y ago
Despite the popular Murdoch-media narrative that big cities have become hellholes, yes. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new...
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  That Bloomberg article is a really interesting experiment in cherry-picking data: it focused specifically on deaths, and only on deaths due to specific causes that helped its case. Yes, New York has fewer homicides and car crash deaths than rural towns, but if you look at most other data, which is arguably more relevant, the opposite story shows up. I'm not that worried about being murdered. Murders tend to happen between people with a relationship. There are very few random murders. In cities, gangs do the murdering, and outside of cities, it is generally crimes of passion. The NYPD is very, very aggressive about going after gangs and murders. This is at the cost of controlling other types of crime. The car crashes are easy to explain: NYC is designed so that you drive very slowly, and there is a 25 mph speed limit everywhere a pedestrian might be. Crashes in NYC are almost always non-fatal. It's not that they don't happen. They are just non-fatal. Personally, I am worried about being mugged or harassed, and that is extremely common in NYC compared to most places. It also happens to be something that happens between unrelated people. That is why I moved out of NYC after having been attacked once and witnessing 2 thefts in 4 years, and that is why the statistics cited in that op-ed are completely useless.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  It's amusing that you bring up a mogul's "media narrative" and then cite a link from Bloomberg News. Michael Bloomberg is of course also a billionaire with his own empire and media company. This piece you are citing is from the Opinion section of Bloomberg News. Bloomberg itself being a company whose headquarters are in NYC and whose founder is Mike Bloomberg a NYC resident himself as well as being a 3 term mayor of NYC. The author of this opinion piece, Justin Fox is also a NYC resident. It's worth noting too that Bloomberg LP company famously does not allow remote work and owns the Bloomberg Tower, a 55 story commercial and residential skyscraper that takes up an entire city block in Midtown. Lastly Bloomberg himself is a polarizing figure since during his long tenure as Mayor he was widely seen as being in bed with big real estate development. His tenure as mayor was notable for the hyper development of luxury real estate. The types of "glass boxes" that are dark most of the year. For more background see: https://therealdeal.com/2019/11/26/love-hate-and-real-estate-bloombergs-record-may-polarize-voters/ https://therealdeal.com/2019/11/26/love-hate-and-real-estate...

throwk8s 4y ago

People that want to be conspicuous have to display their success where it's going to be seen. Living in a place that is "central" in so many ways is a competition to see who can hang in there. The only way to stay is to keep winning bigger.

standardUser 4y ago
What? Most people I know in Manhattan are just people with jobs who enjoy living in the city. There is no "displaying their success" or "keep winning bigger" mentality to be found in my sprawling NYC-based friend group. Sounds like something from TV or the movies.
- throwk8s 4y ago
  > There is no "displaying their success" or "keep winning bigger" mentality to be found They may not realize the game they're in. But as long as the cost of living keeps hitting new peaks, inevitably people need to bring in more money, or move farther out or elsewhere. Supply is limited, and it is a competition.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    "They may not realize the game they're in." And the award for Most Condescending Comment goes to... But in all seriousness, this has always been happening. NYC is NYC because the cost of living keeps hitting new peaks, over and over, generation after generation. The same with so many high-demand cities. That's how they got to be such massive, dense cities to begin with. We're all just riding the wave.
    - throwk8s 4y ago
      > And the award for Most Condescending Comment goes to... I probably could have phrased that better. In any case I don't think what we're saying is incompatible. One has no choice but to keep up with the cost of living. My point is that the cost of living in a massively "central" city is defined by a lot of people driven to succeed and be seen succeeding, whether or not that's the mentality of one's group of friends.

SkipperCat 4y ago

I live in Brooklyn and feel the same way. Even if you discount all the empty luxury apartments held by foreigners who never show up, there are still tons of people who want to move here. Why?, because when you have all these people crammed together - weird stuff happens and that's what makes NYC magical. We're constantly mixing together, in the subways, bars, restaurant, parks ,etc. You get to see firsthand all the humanity of this city. No other city in America has replicated that.

neon_electro 4y ago
I won't argue/disagree with you as far as NYC's comparably higher degree of what you describe, but having lived in Philadelphia's core, there's plenty of the mixing magic happening in other cities, but it's definitely not "the same".
- namose 4y ago
  Philly is also probably the closest approximation to NYC in this way. Most other cities in the US are so segregated that wealthier neighborhoods feel like suburbs (looking at DC and Boston here).
  - eatonphil 4y ago
    Check out Eastern Queens. :) It's indistinguishable from wealthy suburbs (and wealthy Nassau County) to me.

simonsarris 4y ago

> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest of America". Some crime stats: https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 edit: NYC has 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, which is 45% more violent than the USA median (4.0). I have no idea how 45% more violent got a reputation as "safer than the rest of America" but it's not true.

FredPret 4y ago
Why would crime stats be expressed by square mile? To purposefully make NYC look bad?
- deleted 4y ago
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- neogodless 4y ago
  The other graph is Per Capita. And while this reminds me of XKCD: Heatmap[0], the density of crime also matters when it's where you live, and the actual proximity you are to frequent violent crimes. [0] https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
orange_joe 4y ago
NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC, and probably live/work/eat within a 1.5-2 mile range). p.s. I really like your content!
- simonsarris 4y ago

mushufasa 4y ago

Having grown up in DC and New York, I would say more strongly that there's no other city in the USA that has comparable mass transit. The way I would put it is -- in New York, it is more of a hassle to have a car than to go without. In all those other cities, while there is some mass transit, you will find yourself wanting a car.

flatline 4y ago
DC is still easier to navigate by car than by metro and bus, at least when I last lived there in 2016. Red line from MD would regularly shut down or have delays, and you were looking at a 2+ hour commute into the district. If you could get a parking spot you could reliably beat metro by about 10 minutes with much less variance. And you cannot navigate a circumferential route in a reasonable time, the purple line is the first to really attempt this and is like a drop in the bucket. If you live and work in the city it’s doable, but cross a river or the beltway and it’s really not. I had friends in Baltimore that could not get by without a car either, and they made a really dedicated effort. Mass transit in the US - outside of NYC - is just not viable at scale.
- jnwatson 4y ago
  Metro being within 10 minutes of driving is quite good. Coming from the silver line, you’d be lucky if you can get within 30 minutes. Parking is such a dice roll in DC that using a car for intra-city travel is not efficient. Lots of DC residents don’t have cars; most housing doesn’t include parking.
ghaff 4y ago
What's pretty much unique about NYC, especially Manhattan, in the US is that there's no cultural expectation that a well-paid professional will own a car. By comparison, people can get by without owning a car in Boston/Cambridge--I did as an undergrad--but get out of school and a lot of your friends probably live in the suburbs/exurbs, you need a car to head off to the mountains, etc. Sure, you can rent and Uber up to a point but most people find it 1.) gets old and 2.) As a practical matter means they mostly just stay in the city because doing otherwise is too much of a hassle.

paxys 4y ago

Agree with everything except the last part. Brooklyn is a fantastic place to live, and takes 20 mins or so door to door to get to most parts of Manhattan.

ctvo 4y ago
The rent in areas adjacent (downtown Brooklyn included) to Brooklyn Heights is nothing to sneeze at. You're looking at equal or higher prices to Manhattan. Even areas further away, like Prospect Heights or Crown Heights, with decent access to transportation have seen quite the uptick in price and availability.
dont__panic 4y ago
20 minutes to most parts of manhattan?!?! I'm sorry, but... you might be able to get to FiDi from downtown BK in 20 minutes, door to door. If you live anywhere else in BK, from Greenpoint to Sheepshead Bay, you're looking at 30 minutes minimum to get into manhattan -- probably closer to an hour door-to-door. Not trying to be rude here, but your statement does not seem to match my lived experience. Maybe you can get 20 minutes door-to-door on a citibike?

wnolens 4y ago

I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle. It really comes down to fear of change I think. Humans are very adaptable, and the same one can thrive in car-centric suburbs as they would in shoulder-to-shoulder metropolises. Given no constraints, you prefer city. But throw in kids (requirement for more space/better schools), or a dream job (passion), or a dying parent (obligation), or a lover.. and suddenly you're building a life in a completely different place. And it works. At least I think/hope.. because outside of a busy city I am irritable and sad. But it sure would be nice to slow down on the treadmill/rat race a bit..

kortilla 4y ago
> Given no constraints, you prefer city. That’s definitely not a given. I know a bunch of people that given no constraints they would live at the edge of a lake with the nearest city being 100+ miles away. But they get forced into a city by the need for a job, or the same constraints you laid out.
- mortehu 4y ago
  "you" refers to GP, so it's literally given.
neilparikh 4y ago
> I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle. Just out of curiosity, what do you think NYC has that Toronto or Seattle don't have? And what are you thoughts on Toronto vs. Seattle? Personally, I've lived in Toronto (which I loved), and visited Seattle for a few days (which I liked, but hard to say from a short visit), so curious to hear what others who have lived in all 3 think (especially since I'm planning to move to Seattle soon).
- sushxbehshx 4y ago

jandrese 4y ago

You are clearly not alone. Skyrocketing rents are a symptom of more people wanting a place to live than there are available spaces. It's not like NYC is bereft of skyscrapers either.

tmaly 4y ago
NPR was talking about the lack of housing across the US today. Their solution was to get involved with zoning meetings and work to change the zoning laws.

tmaly 4y ago

Train from White Plains is only like 30 min, but yeah it is a much different vibe.

bogomipz 4y ago

>"I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America." Is there any data to back this up? The latest NYPD crime statistics, show a city with increasing crime. "Overall index crime in New York City increased by 27.8% in May 2022 compared with May 2021 (10,414 v. 8,149). Each of the seven major index crime categories saw increases, driven by a 42.1% increase in grand larceny (4,116 v. 2,897); a 28.3% rise in burglary (1,239 v. 966); and a 26.2% increase in robbery (1,506 v. 1,193)." See: [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00050/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-may-2022 https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00050/nypd-citywide-cri...

dangus 4y ago

Before I start with my comment, I'll remind everyone that averages skew very high when there are outliers. NYC has a high quantity of extremely high rent tenants. I wish more news articles used medians and median per capita when discussing rents. The main point I want to make: even with those high rents, we tend to forget how much our cars cost us, directly and indirectly. Directly: AAA's average new car TCO is close to $10,000 a year. Multiply by two for a typical couple and that's $1600 a month you could dump into your NYC apartment's high rent. Unlimited MTA rides only cost $1500/year/person. Indirectly: There's the obvious car crash issue, the top killer of children (well, guns just passed that, but luckily NYC is safer than the average American city in that regard), but the other main example is health. We're not supposed to sit all day. My doctor moved from a car suburb to the city and admitted they lost weight and walk a lot more. When walking is the easier option compared to attempting to drive to your daily errands, it's much better for you and extends your life, especially when considering your high-quality years of life. Number one premature killer is heart disease, by far. Even if you're just walking to the subway, that's a lot more activity than your commute to your garage. NYC's obesity rate is half of the national rate. HALF! That's downright incredible. In NYC I see very old people walking everywhere, stereotypically playing chess in the park, meanwhile I have suburban relatives struggling to walk across the Walmart parking lot and they haven't even hit 70 years old. They may live into their 80's but it will not be pleasant for them. The difference in alertness is noticeable. As a bonus, old people in NYC never had to drive so they never have a retired life feeling isolated to their home. I think the best way to try and stabilize rent is to buy a condo. It's not a silver bullet due to property taxes and HOA fees that rise with inflation, but it's still a slower rise than renting, I think. You can definitely find 2 bedroom condos with monthly payments under $5000 in Manhattan. If you're interested in what NYC apartments are really like and how far your money gets you (along with some general YouTube vlogging entertainment), a channel I recommend is Cash Jordan. I won't link it but I'm sure you can find it. Like any other real estate market, it's all about compromises. If you want to live in NYC and pay $1000/month/person, you can definitely do it. You can also pay $10,000/month if you want. The big caveat to everything I'm saying is that the poor are unlikely to live in the most walkable areas, and a lot of them will perhaps have to own a car. This is definitely the case in Chicago, where the most walkable areas are also the most desirable and affluent (I wonder why that is? Maybe our whole country would be more desirable and affluent if it wasn't designed to be a cash funnel where we dump our income into constructing vehicles, maintaining the infrastructure and utilities utilities of nearly unused land, and burning oil?)

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago

You just need to gentrify Newark. The PATH is faster than the subway from Brooklyn/Queens.

thehappypm 4y ago

I see Boston as the tech hub of the East more than NYC. New York obviously has a large number of tech jobs, but Boston and DC both have a higher concentration of tech; in NYC the big fish is obviously finance. I discount DC a little because a lot of that is government and defense related (not a bad thing, just not my cup of tea). Boston has a lot of diversity in tech, lots of health/pharma like Moderna, web companies like TripAdvisor and Wayfair, robotics like Boston Dynamics, tons of startups doing ai/ml, and it seems like every big company has a substantial presence here (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce…)

dayvid 4y ago
Boston's interesting in that it feels more low-key than NYC or Silicon Valley. Most of the biotech companies feel a lot more secretive and I don't see as many public events. The valley has a vibe in that everyone you meet is involved in tech work in some way and will talk about it to you or in public. It doesn't feel that way here, or you have to be a part of certain circles maybe. There are some small biotech meetup groups, but maybe they all do communication at the universities?
- thehappypm 4y ago
  That vibe definitely exist, in Cambridge and Somerville, and maybe the Seaport, where the tech folks love to live. Everyone in Camberville seems to be in tech or tech adjacent.
  - jghn 4y ago
    In my neighborhood the branded swag has shifted from mostly tech to mostly biotech over the last several years.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      A lot of computer-related tech (and defense sector) in the Boston area has historically been out in the suburbs, e.g. the "Route 128" companies. After Teradyne moved out, there was very little tech presence left in the actual city. That shifted with biotech/pharma and, more recently, with companies in the Seaport and Cambridge and the outposts of the big West Coast-HQd companies. But a lot of the tech industry is still well to the West and North of the city.

legohead 4y ago

Have you been affected by the rent increase yet? Curious how much power the landlords have there. Can they raise your rent without warning, are they trying to force you out, etc.

frutiger 4y ago
They can't push you out. In uncontrolled apartments, the rent gets renegotiated at the end of every lease term (usually 1 or 2 years). There are exceptions for rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments, where the landlords have even less power on price setting.
stomczyk09 4y ago
Not personally. I know some of my friends have been who moved back well after the "Covid Discounts" were a thing, got a little bit of an inflated deal, and now are facing like at least 3k for 1 bedrooms in places like around Williamsburg & Lower Manhattan(west village, soho, etc.). That's one of the better case scenarios I've heard as well. Truly a shame :(

mupuff1234 4y ago

An escooter might be a good transportation choice.

sparc24 4y ago

Everyone should spend a couple of early years in NYC. You'll be better off for it even you end up moving to New Hampshire.

ghaff 4y ago
Eh. I spent a summer there once. Admittedly in the 80s and admittedly as a relatively poor student intern. I like visiting NYC for a few days every now and then but I couldn't wait to get out at the time.
birdyrooster 4y ago
I’m not sure this scales

Aunche 4y ago

Part of the problem is that most people would rather move to an existing desirable city than try to improve their own to make it more desirable, myself included. In most major cities, less than 20% of people vote for mayor, let alone city council. Most of those who do vote in local elections are much old. http://whovotesformayor.org/ http://whovotesformayor.org/

acchow 4y ago
The goal posts keep moving tho. Even if your city becomes closer to NYC circa 2010, NYC is moving towards becoming a totally different beast of NYC circa 2030. There will always be a massive gap
dgunay 4y ago
I don't blame them. It can take decades for the kind of change that urbanists want to fully play out, and I bet they would rather experience good city life while they can enjoy it.
- asdff 4y ago
  Exactly. The bike lane network plan in LA county has been on the books for 10 years now and its still a patchwork mess in the second largest city in this country where you could realistically bike to work every day of the year. There is no hope elsewhere for change. If you don't already have it you won't ever have it or you will be beating sand until you die fighting for a mile of bike lane or a single train line that waits at red lights.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    That kind of proves my point though doesn't it? There is a definite demand for bike lanes. However, civic participation is abysmal for everyone but the elderly who tend to be NIMBYs. If more people pitched in, we wouldn't have to rely the efforts of a few hyper-dedicated individuals.
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iancmceachern 4y ago

Move to SF. Having lived here and Manhattan I think many of the things you like about NY are present here. Just don't listen to the headlines.

tomtheelder 4y ago
As someone who has also lived in both places (and lives in neither of them currently), I'd have to vehemently disagree. SF is not only comparably expensive, it's also incredibly far behind in transit, far more homogeneous in all sorts of ways, much less culturally interesting and significant, and- despite my agreeing that the headlines are blowing it out of proportion- pretty clearly headed in the wrong direction overall. It has some potential advantages (weather, proximity to nature, stronger tech job market), but I relate to the OP comment a lot, and for me SF just cannot even slightly compare to NY. Obviously this is all just my opinion! I know tons of people love it there.

time_to_smile 4y ago

I'm confused what the "problem" is, is it that things you really like are expensive? I really like driving a Porsche, but it would seem a bit odd to lament a wild increase in new Porsche prices or my salary not keeping up with owning one as a "problem". I also really like that in Paris you can affordably get a glass of real champagne with every meal, but I hardly consider it a "problem" that in the US this isn't really reasonable. Things are getting more expensive, for some people that means they can't eat steak as much as they like, for others it means they need to move in with their parents, for you it means you might not live in the heart of one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the world. I've always found it a bit odd that in the tech community there is this assumption that people have the right to live wherever they want, and that somehow living in NYC or SF during it's prime isn't its own variety of luxury good. I enjoy champaign when I'm in Paris, and am glad that at least for today I can drive a Porsche. I've spent plenty of years in a beat-up old Ford and drinking yuengling, won't be terribly surprised if I spent plenty more doing the same in the future.

g9yuayon 4y ago

Sounds we should really build walkable city with convenient mass transit in the US and Europe. It's a shame that building anything infrastructure in the US is prohibitively expensive.

zjaffee 4y ago
Building single family homes is much cheaper in the US because of prefabrication. It's something like 3x less per square foot than a 5/1.

mynameishere 4y ago

I'm picturing this guy riding around on a New York City subway car and thinking to himself "Yep, this is worth $5,000 a month."

samstave 4y ago

What % of available living space is not lived in, and further what % is owned by foreign nationals. I know that in MANY countries, one is precluded from owning any property if not a citizen. Obviously this leads to a bunch of corruption issues with bribing and marrying nationals for access to property, but the USA has literally zero control on property ownership. You know how much foreign money laundering is done through US property ownership? MOST of it. A vertical zoning law might be an option: There are places like Singapore where you cant build a high-rise unless the subterranian aspects of the project dont include a connection to other sub services, like the walkway malls and such. I say do a % split on a vertical level which must include subterranian levels as a course: The building MUST include underground parking, a commerical section and a range of income level sections. You cant just build a high-rise of $millions apartments. Look at Millennial Tower in SF. What a disaster. I HUGE legal BS and not a single person with a net worth of south of 10 million was accommodated in that disaster - but it still cost the city (i.e. tax payers who are NOT worth >10 million -- millions of dollars.

colinmhayes 4y ago
My quick google says 4% of apartments are vacant in nyc. Got to believe the vast majority of that is structural vacancy while landlords clean units and look for new tenants. feels like a none issue to me.
- samstave 4y ago
  Nit: 4% of "apartments" - means "apartments that are available from landlords seeking to rent to rentors and likely consitute the available inventory that is unable to churn, due to already being either overpriced, or shit-holes nobody wants to live in." this is a different metric than: What % of luxury "apartments" are uninhabited in extremely high cost situations where an average person isnt renting the "apartment" - but laundering money by owning such place and paying a tax placeholder fee... And in addition CHURN What % of apartments are experiencing churn and whilst during so, what is the rent increase on each new wave of tenants... This would be a really intresting tower defence game. You are the landlord/super/scumlease You have apartments that will constantly dwindle in desireability so you have upkeep. You can accept the upkeep cost, or, for a lesser price, evict the current tenant and accept a new tenant at a fraction of the upkeep cost to keep revenues going into the future with % rates you like that keep you slum lord-ship going... or you kill them all, demolish and build a new building gentrify the neighborhood and blame it on rats, older policies etc... We need a TRUMP LORD 2000 NYC SIM module. Instead of installing new sewar, water, fire PREVENTION systems You are needed to install new RAT, SUPER, COP-INTERFERENCE-BRIBERY schemes to keep your shit going... Like the trump Water Heater Scandal. (this buildingz gunnaz needz a newz water heatahz... My cousin tony iz dah only guyz who gunna do dis Pay mah kidz what dez needz be paid, and you can stay) --- THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENED IN NYC

TuringNYC 4y ago

How much of the rising rents are risk premia for future cases of "government says you dont have to pay rent and cant be evicted" that we experienced in 2020-present? I'm curious if there has been a Natural Experiment comparing rent increases in places which did vs didn't have eviction moratoriums during COVID.

zjaffee 4y ago

As someone who grew up in NYC, the only lasting appeal to me is family and specific ethnic culture that is much less in every city in the US that isn't NYC. The apartment I grew up in, in lower manhattan, today would cost more than 20-30 times what my parents paid for it in the 90s, and it wasn't a nice apartment. There was no laundry in the unit, it faced a dark courtyard, the tempurature of the apartment was never that comfortable, had yearly huge bug infestations, but it was in a great location and was about 5 rooms more or less. I think people just romanticize a life different than the one they grew up with. I certainly miss some aspects of the city culturally, but life on the west coast, I've had considerably better living arrangements ever since I've graduated college than the one I grew up in, and my parents were both professionals with graduate degrees, it's even worse for a lot of other people.

thex10 4y ago
I grew up in NYC, in an even worse apartment. Despite no longer having family there, I would return in a heartbeat. I loved it and wish I could raise my kid there (in a better apartment, mind you)
- zjaffee 4y ago
  If I could have a better apartment there I would absolutely consider moving there. The issue is that I'd have to live somewhere that would be considerably worse, and me and my partner make many times more than my parents did when they bought their place when adjusted for inflation.

ryukafalz 4y ago

As someone who currently lives in Philly… yeah, I feel this. I love being able to get around on foot and by transit, but Philly is still a pretty car-centric place compared to what I’ve seen of NYC, and I wish it weren’t. That plus making it easier/safer to get around by bike/scooter/etc. That’s something even NYC doesn’t seem to do well; have to look at international peers to see good examples of that.

filmgirlcw 4y ago

As a New Yorker who had to move to Seattle for a job five years ago and misses the city every single day, I totally agree with you. I will say, depending on how close you are to a train station, Brooklyn isn’t bad. Yeah, it’s 45 minutes door to door, but you get to walk and listen to podcasts or whatever on the train. As commutes go, it’s definitely doable. But I totally agree with you that many people don’t want to live anywhere else and people who don’t love New York might not understand that, but New York is different from every other major city in the US. I’m still carless in Seattle (I don’t drive and have no desire to drive) but it’s so much harder (my husband does have a car but I can’t rely on that for my own needs). And although Seattle is somewhat cheaper than Brooklyn (it’s really not but my luxury building in Capitol Hill definitely costs less than a luxury building in Williamsburg foot for foot — I pay about 70% more in Seattle than I did in Brooklyn, however), the things I’ve lost compared to New York are massive. I’ve definitely considered moving back now that I’m at a fully-remote company (that does have office space in NYC), but there are some practical realities about being in Seattle for my job that makes that hard. Maybe when my lease is up next year, I’ll reassess.

dcow 4y ago

Just to provide a 3rd party reaction here: it sounds like you've circularly reasoned yourself into a trap of your own making. You don't want to live anywhere else because you like NYC. Because no other city is exactly like NYC, you aren't interested in living anywhere else. The reason it's "circular" is because there are cities with good transit, good arts, great food, have a tech scene, and even have financial districts and you'd be surprised to find out how well diverse cultures get along in a log of smaller towns across the US (far fewer racial/cultural over/under-tones) and how safe they are (safer than NYC). Yeah, no other place is the center for any of these things save SF being the tech nexus and maybe having better renditions of some types of cuisine. So if you have to be in the center of the world, then yeah, you're not going to find other centers of the world. For me, personally, I'm disappointed by how few world cities the US has. NYC and Chicago are really it. My silly benchmark for what makes a city a world city is that it operates 24hrs a day (at least parts of it). Chicago barely does but I think it counts. Everywhere else in the US just dies past 10pm and especially past 2am.

brailsafe 4y ago
I think your last point is an interesting arbitrary distinction, if you're going to make one. While Vancouver is pretty well regarded as a NA city with pretty decent transit infrastructure and other nice qualities, it does basically close after 2am which isn't as nice as a night owl. Transit stops almost completely around that time too. Edit: None of this comment was meant to detract, just a comparison in agreement to the city I'm nore familiar with. Maybe Toronto's different
nradov 4y ago
That seems like a silly criteria. How many people really care about doing things at 3:00 AM? We're talking about a small niche of shift workers and childless young people. Las Vegas operates 24 hours a day if that's what you want.
- dcow 4y ago
  Have you lived in or visited a world city? The feel and vibe is very different. It's why New York is called the city that never sleeps. When you get dense enough, there's always something to do and people out wanting to do it or at least wanting to serve it to you.

hardwaregeek 4y ago

I have a fantasy where a Robert Moses-type figure builds out super fast trains that connect Long Island, NJ, upstate New York, and effectively urbanize the entire tri-state area. New York becomes this super city where you can go from White Plains to the tip of Long Island in an hour. Housing becomes cheaper as neighborhoods that were previously impractical become feasible for New Yorkers. Car ownership drops in the outer suburbs as people embrace public transportation. Gentrification stays an issue but because of more housing, it's less brutal. Unfortunately this is pretty unlikely unless there happens to be another political genius like Moses who also happens to love public transportation. Maybe an Andy Byford-Robert Moses combo?

m_ke 4y ago
I’d love to see someone brave enough to marge north east jersey and lower Connecticut into NYC and connect them with proper transit, pretty much merge LIRR, Path and MTA under one NYC administered transit system, then add some high speed rail along the old train lines. Then make all public transit free and turn half of the roads into bus, pedestrian and bike only paths.

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tfbkggjjji 4y ago

Are US cities the only options? Why not move to London or something?

fritztastic 4y ago

I went to NYC many many times when I lived in New England, my cousin went to school there and took the train down multiple times a week for years, her mother worked and lived there for decades, my father went there every week for work for many years. Anecdotally our experiences have been that the city is generally safe, none of us have any crime stories to tell. My parents also used to go there a lot in the 90s and the city has come a long long way since then- for the better.

xwowsersx 4y ago

There are many, many places to live with crime rates far lower than NYC so I'm not sure I really understand this. Maybe you mean compared with most places you could see yourself living? For example, I live in a nice town in CT and the crime rate is 3.99 per 1000 vs NYC which is currently about 13.3 per 1000, making NYC (as a whole — I understand your point about neighborhoods within the city) 3x higher in crime. I understand the other things you appreciate about the city. It's great to able to walk outside and have amazing restaurants and other amenities a few feet away; there's a reason many people like the city.

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tails4e 4y ago

Honestly don't get what is so special about NY... It's not bad, but on the flipside is pretensious, expensive, and difficult to travel to/from.... also all of the things you mention that are positive points are by no means unique to new york.

timbo1642 4y ago

obiefernandez 4y ago

Have you considered Mexico City?

justWells 4y ago

This reads like a silly NY maximalist without really any context of the rest of the country. New York is cool and all but I’m not paying 60k in rent to live somewhere marginally better then a handful of major cities in the country. I moved to the PNW and the idea of living in a city now seems insane

2143 4y ago

> I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along in the city, across many cultures and backgrounds. I like it has some of the best food in the world. Isn't most of that true for most large cities anywhere in the world? Consider Amsterdam. - Mass transit? Yes. - Not owning a car? Sure. - Safer than America. - Tech hub, yes. - Finance hub? uhh, does it really matter? - Everybody gets along, across many cultures. - Food? Depends on your taste, but all kinds of cuisine are available. Or consider Singapore/London/Gothenburg/Paris/Toronto/so-many-others. Similar deal. Sometimes even a better deal, depending on your priorities. Of course, I fully agree that NYC is a cool place :)

iskander 4y ago
NYC is pretty much the only quasi-European larger city in the US, and in North America maybe only Mexico City and Montreal are comparable. Boston and DC are more influenced by cars but still have a large fraction of the city that's walkable. The effect of cars on urban fabric is very depressing elsewhere in the US.