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Most New Yorkers pay a full-time minimum wage salary in rent every year (or more). It used to be unsustainable for the working class here, now it's unsustainabl

Most New Yorkers pay a full-time minimum wage salary in rent every year (or more). It used to be unsustainable for the working class here, now it's unsustainable for anyone but the very rich here. And it's 100% down to real estate and developers (the land kind). They're ruining our city and turning it into a Disneyland for the megarich.

engineer_22 4y ago
New York isn't just a city.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
unglaublich 4y ago
Real estate owners ARE the megarich. And they earn this money by doing absolutely and contributing absolutely NOTHING of value to society. They earn money by exploiting the scarcity of an essential need.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  They pay income taxes on rent. They pay property taxes. They maintain and repair their properties. In what universe are they doing nothing?
  - eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    I think OP mean doing "nothing good". It's not that they are doing nothing.. but the argument is it's certainly not a net positive in terms of overall society. They are purely benefitting the rich at the expense of everyone else.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    No, they pass their taxes and maintenance costs onto me, because what the hell am I going to do, move to a different apartment? They own that one too, if it isn't already full because they haven't built new apartments in my city in 20 years. At least they didn't. The past couple years they built like three new giant apartment complexes in the city. They all list for 3x the local average rent. They aren't for residents, they are for rich tourists.
    - cycrutchfield 4y ago
      So let me get this straight, your landlord also owns every other apartment in your city. Simultaneously, your landlord is responsible for not building any more new housing. But also your landlord did build new housing, but it’s out of your price range so you are angry. Sounds like your landlord actually lives rent-free, in your head at least.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        No the landlords that own the expensive tourist "rentals" aren't the same as my landlord, but my landlord DOES own 4 of the only a few apartment complexes in the area. My apartment complex is run by a property management company that is headquartered in an entirely different state. Most of the rest of the buildings in my city that house people are shitty 1920s homes that are rented out by small time landlords, complexes intentionally or otherwise meant exclusively for section 8 housing, or literal old age homes. It's more profitable FYI for a builder to erect a giant, luxury old age home right on the most busy street rather than build ANY actual housing, because the state pays them $10k a month to house you at the end of their life, and they pay a nurse $50k a year to look after thirty people a day.
sokoloff 4y ago
If people are having to pay a large amount for rent, isn't that based largely on the balance of supply (not enough) and demand (too much) of housing? If that's the case, it's not at all obvious to me that the suppliers of housing units are to blame.
- joomooru 4y ago
  Suppliers lobby to limit the amount of housing being built. Suppliers build luxury apartment buildings which are out of reach for lower-income residents, further limiting supply in the lower band of the housing market. Surely the suppliers share a large part of the blame here.
  - tetromino_ 4y ago
    > Suppliers lobby to limit the amount of housing being built. If "suppliers" means "existing homeowners and landlords", then sure. If "suppliers" means "developers building new real estate", then your assertion is blatantly false. Developers have a financial incentive to build and sell as many units as possible. And in practice they are lobbying to build as much as possible, but are running into problems: * environmental reviews a.k.a. bored busybodies' legal right to oppose anything being built anywhere and delay your project for years * regulations limiting how many units can be built on a given lot (height limits, parking minimums, zones prohibiting multifamily buildings) * regulations making construction unnecessarily expensive (e.g. NYC regulations making it prohibitively expensive for most projects to operate a construction crane) * racist local politicians who fight tooth and nail against any new units in their neighborhood because then people with the wrong skin color might move in (this applies to local politicians of all skin colors; e.g. see https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/03/03/harlem-clean-energy-development-project-faces-opposition https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/03/03/har...).
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    There is evidence that opposition to new construction is not only from home-owners, but also from renters, due to economic ignorance: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/the-folk-economics-of-housing-is-folked-up.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/th...
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
just did the math and you're right. I'm paying the equivalent of a full-time employee at $16 / hr just in rent. Pretty wild when you put it that way...
nobody9999 4y ago
>Most New Yorkers pay a full-time minimum wage salary in rent every year (or more). It used to be unsustainable for the working class here, now it's unsustainable for anyone but the very rich here. As as New Yorker with a rent stabilized lease[0], I pay about half in rent what my neighbors do. Even so, my monthly nut (rent/utilities/ISP/etc., not counting food and other consumables) is ~$4,000. I could probably cut that to $3,500 or so if I wanted, but not much less. Add in food, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc. and I'm easily at $4,750-$5000 a month. That number doesn't include clothing, laundry, hair cuts, doctor visits, transportation and some other stuff, so it's actually a bit higher. But let's just work with $5,000/month for the moment. That's $60,000/annum net income that's required. As a ballpark (counting FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes), a minimum gross salary of $95,000-$100,000 is required to support that. But that's just basic necessities. And don't forget, I pay ~1/2 what my neighbors do in rent. So for other folks it's even more onerous. There certainly are less expensive places to live in NYC, but with my stabilized lease, not so much less expensive for a comparable place, even in the outer boroughs. So let's assume a single person making minimum wage (in NY, that's $15/hour) and actually able to get 40 hours of work per week. That's $600/week or $31,200/annum gross pay. Which, including FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes, comes out to ~26%. Meaning net pay is ~$23,000/annum or ~$1,900/month. According to most recommendations, one shouldn't spend more than 30% of net income on housing. For a minimum wage worker in NYC, that's about $600/month. And since the median rent in NYC is $3,395/month, a minimum wage worker would need at least two roommates to afford such an apartment and still be paying ~50% of their income on rent. Yes, half the rentals are less than that. And half are more. So yes, people can survive on minimum wage and would still be tight making the national median[1] income (~$70,000/annum in 2021). But even at the US Median income, it's not a "Living Wage" which implies the ability to meet your immediate needs and have a least a small surplus. So it should come as no surprise that the median income for a single person in NYC is ~93,000, some three times minimum wage. What does all this say? That NYC is very expensive (housing is the biggest issue) and even those making $100,000/annum are likely to need to make tradeoffs. And someone making minimum wage ($31,200/annum) or even the national median income (~$70,000/annum) will have trouble making ends meet. [0] https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/rent-stabilization/ https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/... [1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27... [2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/area-median-income.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/area-m...

engineer_22 4y ago

New York isn't just a city.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

unglaublich 4y ago

Real estate owners ARE the megarich. And they earn this money by doing absolutely and contributing absolutely NOTHING of value to society. They earn money by exploiting the scarcity of an essential need.

cycrutchfield 4y ago
They pay income taxes on rent. They pay property taxes. They maintain and repair their properties. In what universe are they doing nothing?
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  I think OP mean doing "nothing good". It's not that they are doing nothing.. but the argument is it's certainly not a net positive in terms of overall society. They are purely benefitting the rich at the expense of everyone else.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  No, they pass their taxes and maintenance costs onto me, because what the hell am I going to do, move to a different apartment? They own that one too, if it isn't already full because they haven't built new apartments in my city in 20 years. At least they didn't. The past couple years they built like three new giant apartment complexes in the city. They all list for 3x the local average rent. They aren't for residents, they are for rich tourists.
  - cycrutchfield 4y ago
    So let me get this straight, your landlord also owns every other apartment in your city. Simultaneously, your landlord is responsible for not building any more new housing. But also your landlord did build new housing, but it’s out of your price range so you are angry. Sounds like your landlord actually lives rent-free, in your head at least.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      No the landlords that own the expensive tourist "rentals" aren't the same as my landlord, but my landlord DOES own 4 of the only a few apartment complexes in the area. My apartment complex is run by a property management company that is headquartered in an entirely different state. Most of the rest of the buildings in my city that house people are shitty 1920s homes that are rented out by small time landlords, complexes intentionally or otherwise meant exclusively for section 8 housing, or literal old age homes. It's more profitable FYI for a builder to erect a giant, luxury old age home right on the most busy street rather than build ANY actual housing, because the state pays them $10k a month to house you at the end of their life, and they pay a nurse $50k a year to look after thirty people a day.

sokoloff 4y ago

If people are having to pay a large amount for rent, isn't that based largely on the balance of supply (not enough) and demand (too much) of housing? If that's the case, it's not at all obvious to me that the suppliers of housing units are to blame.

joomooru 4y ago
Suppliers lobby to limit the amount of housing being built. Suppliers build luxury apartment buildings which are out of reach for lower-income residents, further limiting supply in the lower band of the housing market. Surely the suppliers share a large part of the blame here.
- tetromino_ 4y ago
  > Suppliers lobby to limit the amount of housing being built. If "suppliers" means "existing homeowners and landlords", then sure. If "suppliers" means "developers building new real estate", then your assertion is blatantly false. Developers have a financial incentive to build and sell as many units as possible. And in practice they are lobbying to build as much as possible, but are running into problems: * environmental reviews a.k.a. bored busybodies' legal right to oppose anything being built anywhere and delay your project for years * regulations limiting how many units can be built on a given lot (height limits, parking minimums, zones prohibiting multifamily buildings) * regulations making construction unnecessarily expensive (e.g. NYC regulations making it prohibitively expensive for most projects to operate a construction crane) * racist local politicians who fight tooth and nail against any new units in their neighborhood because then people with the wrong skin color might move in (this applies to local politicians of all skin colors; e.g. see https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/03/03/harlem-clean-energy-development-project-faces-opposition https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/03/03/har...).
- zajio1am 4y ago
  There is evidence that opposition to new construction is not only from home-owners, but also from renters, due to economic ignorance: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/the-folk-economics-of-housing-is-folked-up.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/11/th...

jobs_throwaway 4y ago

just did the math and you're right. I'm paying the equivalent of a full-time employee at $16 / hr just in rent. Pretty wild when you put it that way...

nobody9999 4y ago

>Most New Yorkers pay a full-time minimum wage salary in rent every year (or more). It used to be unsustainable for the working class here, now it's unsustainable for anyone but the very rich here. As as New Yorker with a rent stabilized lease[0], I pay about half in rent what my neighbors do. Even so, my monthly nut (rent/utilities/ISP/etc., not counting food and other consumables) is ~$4,000. I could probably cut that to $3,500 or so if I wanted, but not much less. Add in food, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc. and I'm easily at $4,750-$5000 a month. That number doesn't include clothing, laundry, hair cuts, doctor visits, transportation and some other stuff, so it's actually a bit higher. But let's just work with $5,000/month for the moment. That's $60,000/annum net income that's required. As a ballpark (counting FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes), a minimum gross salary of $95,000-$100,000 is required to support that. But that's just basic necessities. And don't forget, I pay ~1/2 what my neighbors do in rent. So for other folks it's even more onerous. There certainly are less expensive places to live in NYC, but with my stabilized lease, not so much less expensive for a comparable place, even in the outer boroughs. So let's assume a single person making minimum wage (in NY, that's $15/hour) and actually able to get 40 hours of work per week. That's $600/week or $31,200/annum gross pay. Which, including FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes, comes out to ~26%. Meaning net pay is ~$23,000/annum or ~$1,900/month. According to most recommendations, one shouldn't spend more than 30% of net income on housing. For a minimum wage worker in NYC, that's about $600/month. And since the median rent in NYC is $3,395/month, a minimum wage worker would need at least two roommates to afford such an apartment and still be paying ~50% of their income on rent. Yes, half the rentals are less than that. And half are more. So yes, people can survive on minimum wage and would still be tight making the national median[1] income (~$70,000/annum in 2021). But even at the US Median income, it's not a "Living Wage" which implies the ability to meet your immediate needs and have a least a small surplus. So it should come as no surprise that the median income for a single person in NYC is ~93,000, some three times minimum wage. What does all this say? That NYC is very expensive (housing is the biggest issue) and even those making $100,000/annum are likely to need to make tradeoffs. And someone making minimum wage ($31,200/annum) or even the national median income (~$70,000/annum) will have trouble making ends meet. [0] https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/rent-stabilization/ https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/... [1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27... [2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/area-median-income.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/area-m...