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I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a g

by cglan 3y ago

I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a city of millions. Sure you can pay more and get something. But it used to be that you traded a lot of quality of life (in unit washer dryer, dishwasher, ac, no walkups, cars, space, etc) for a lower price and the social aspects of living in a city. People don’t believe it, but cities used to be cheap. Now you literally pay more for less in all respects especially during Covid. As the prices have been spiraling up, you also get demographic shifts of only rich people or literally homeless shitting on the streets so you lose the cultural elements of having a diverse income unless you go deep into Brooklyn. I’m not arguing that NYC is not fun still. It’s still great. But without housing for a semi normal price (I can’t even get a place with a dishwasher for less than 2.5k in most areas), and a lot of it, the trade off for living in nyc is making less and less sense.

deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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necrotic_comp 3y ago
This is true. It's so depressing to have your salary and responsibility go up, but still have the same living circumstances as you did when you had your first job out of college. I still don't have a laundry machine or a thermostat, I have holes in my walls from when my landlord half-did things, my rent has gone up, and I'm expected to continue to do more and get more responsibility. Something's gotta give. I'm not sure what it's gonna be.
bequanna 3y ago
> It’s still great. I’ve been to NYC many times and have friends in their late 30s that live there. The ones that live there say the same (“it’s great”) but never elaborate. From the outside, it honestly looks like a dirty, difficult, chaotic city. Many restaurants, but all seem to be copy+paste coffee shop, Italian, etc or very low quality cafe/deli. Coming from the Midwest, it feels very old, dirty and poor yet somehow expensive and desirable. What am I missing?
- 4death4 3y ago
  Dirty and poor compared to what?
  - bequanna 3y ago
    If you haven’t, I’d suggest you visit a large or mid size city in a prosperous north Midwest state like Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, etc. People I know from the East Coast that have visited are typically floored by the quality of life in flyover country. Everything we have is new, life is affordable, top performing schools and communities are growing. The local governments are generally growth oriented with excellent infrastructure and relatively Low taxes. Oh, but maybe not as many Thai/niche ethnic restaurants, so there is that downside, ha. But beyond your 20s, why anyone would consider calling NYC home is beyond me. Quality of life for my family > proximity to restaurants and bands.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > a large or mid size city in a prosperous north Midwest state Which city?
      - reducesuffering 3y ago
        It seems they gave you enough information: Minneapolis, Madison, Des Moines, Sioux Falls, Cedar Rapids.
  - gorbachev 3y ago
    Virtually every other city anywhere in the western world, especially outside of the United States.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  The cultural, nightlife, and entertainment aspects. All cities are varying degrees of old/disgusting.
- CydeWeys 3y ago
shortrounddev2 3y ago
And new york decides the best way to solve this problem is to irrationally ban short term rentals rather than just building more housing
- phailhaus 3y ago
  If you don't ban short-term rentals and just build housing, how does that fix the problem? People will buy it up and just put it on AirBnB.
  - varispeed 3y ago
    Supply and demand. At one point there should be enough supply that AirBnB will bring too little profit for people to be bothered. Things like AirBnB work precisely because the supply is constrained.
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      I agree we should build more housing. But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists. Now maybe banning airbnb will put such a damper on tourism that it becomes a problem, but let's deal with that problem when it happens.
      - shortrounddev2 3y ago
        > But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists Tourists bring in good tax dollars for the city since NYC has insane hotel taxes on top of the ridiculous cost of Hotels. From a moral perspective, it really shouldn't be anyone's business how a property owner decides to use their property. If they want to rent it on month-to-month leases or 12 month leases, it's up to them. If there's not enough permanent or long-term housing, then you need to deregulate NYC's byzantine zoning regulations and make it a lot easier to build whatever, wherever. Also you need to get rid of rent control; it is categorically proven to make things worse
      - 3y ago
4death4 3y ago
This would make sense if the population growth was increasing but at a slower rate. But, the population is actively declining. Somehow, 5.3% of people went from having housing to leaving, so I don’t think housing is the only story here.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > This would make sense if the population growth was increasing but at a slower rate. But, the population is actively declining. Somehow, 5.3% of people went from having housing to leaving, so I don’t think housing is the only story here. Yes, when your rent goes up 10-20% YoY and you simultaneously lose some or all of your income, you tend to leave. A lot of people left NYC in the last few years because they could not afford it, with housing being both the main expense and also the one that has increased the most in the last few years.
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  There's absolutely a housing shortage. Fewer people living in one unit is how you get a shrinking population while the housing supply remains static. And rent control exacerbates it, as you have literally over a million people that are a "locked into" their below-market rate units and can never leave because they'll never find anything that cheap elsewhere, regardless of whether they still need that much space. My great aunt for example is 101 years old and lives in a 3 bedroom apartment in Queens. 50 years ago there were 4 people living in that apartment (including her husband and her kids, all now dead). Plus there's the issue of renovations/demolitions that remove units and replace them with a smaller number of more expensive units.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    > Fewer people living in one unit is how you get a shrinking population while the housing supply remains static. No, that's not how normal distributions work. Among the 5.3%, some significant portion of those left empty housing units in their wake. They weren't all 3rd roommates that left.
    - 3y ago
jjulius 3y ago
>I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. >Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a cities of millions. I'm currently in my mid-30's. Throughout all of my 20's, I thought it would be a blast to live in NYC. Then I had a good stretch where I visited it a whole bunch of times, hanging out with friends and family who lived there, and you know what I noticed? Unless you were an older family member who owned a home/apartment, every younger person was renting and the topic of conversation among locals, both locals who knew each other and locals who just met one another, was about where they're living, how much their rent is, what kind of battle they had to go through to get the place, what kind of battles their friends went through to get their places, and then they'd compare the different amenities they had or didn't have. I watched these same conversations - some of which were told like war stories - play out again and again and again and again. Then, you get into the whole issue of bed bugs, how prevalent they are in NYC and how much of a nightmare it is to deal with them, and you realize that life in NYC is largely spent just trying to figure out how to have a place to live, and it suddenly feels incredibly stupid to bother to try and move there. The nightlife and entertainment and culture, as cool as they are, just aren't worth it if you're constantly hassling with such a basic need. But that's just me. /shrug
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > life in NYC is largely spent just trying to figure out how to have a place to live There's a lot going on in NYC, possibly more than anywhere in the world. And in fact, that's why people want to move there.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Add in the considerations regarding moving every couple of years and doing it all over again. There's no long term stability to be had, so it's no wonder that people left when given the chance in the form of increased remote opportunities and a lifestyle "reset" in the form of covid.
ThomPete 3y ago
Agree. Food wise it's wild too. What used to be the price of an entres is now the price of an appetizer and the service have gotten down too. Getting a place you actually want to live 2 bedrooms is at least $4K we pay much more because we live in a nice building. But it's still a great city and I am sure somethings gotta give.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  Bad service means the economy is good. Haven't you heard of the hot waitress index?
- parineum 3y ago
  > and the service have gotten down too This is a tangent but mid and post pandemic, restaurant service seems to be significantly worse. Prices going up at least makes sense to me, prices are up everywhere, it is what it is and I can still afford to eat out. However, I find rarely do go out to restaurants now and service is a major part of that. Not to mention tipping percentages seems to have inflated on top of prices and for worse service... I tend to end up at more casual places where I'm ordering at the counter and my food comes out to me (bistro's I guess? I'm not sure what the term is) where I'm mostly on my own after that, getting my own silverware, drinks, napkins, etc.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  I ate at a place the other weekend in Brooklyn for lunch. Some small plates BS, so we had to get a number of items. Without drinks we are talking $50/head for a couple to have lunch, easily hitting $100/head if you drank. The table they sat my wife & I at was, I swear to you, 2 square feet. It was a protrusion from the shelving in the wall that they had placed 2 backless tools at. It was like taking a 16" MacBook Pro and unfolding it so it was splayed open... I got the keyboard and wife got the screen. We actually begged to be sat at the bar instead but they declined. At some point it's just not worth it anymore. I'm too old for this. Maybe zoomers living in small studio who are meeting randos for a date. I had less eating space than when I eat my sad salad lunch at my desk. Who needs that anxiety on a Sunday afternoon. I have dining seating in my apartment for 6-8 people and I'm hunched over a veritable coach flight tray table and paying for the privilege?
fny 3y ago
1. Most people rent not buy in NYC. There are plenty of rentals. 2. I’m in the market to buy, and I’ve been able to make bids below asking so I’m not sure demand is as high as you’d suggest.
- misiti3780 3y ago
  depends on the neighborhood. i suspect low bids are not possible in the west village or Williamsburg
- henry2023 3y ago
  "I've been able to make bids below asking so I'm not sure demand is as high as you'd suggest" You can have super high demand all making bellow asking bids if the asking price is irrational.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
crowcroft 3y ago
Interesting, is the housing supply decreasing at all, or are those houses sitting empty for long? If those houses are sitting empty for weeks then maybe there's going to be a bit of a correction (hard to imagine rent ever going down in NY though). If those houses aren't sitting empty for long, then maybe NY is going through a lot of churn. Will be interesting to see how NY changes over the next few years.
ylhert 3y ago
[flagged]
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Sure you can pay more and get something. But it used to be that you traded a lot of quality of life (in unit washer dryer, dishwasher, ac, no walkups, cars, space, etc) for a lower price and the social aspects of living in a city. On the other hand, if "every" landlord "just" asks for more, what the fuck is anyone going to do about it?
- NickM 3y ago
  Move away? I mean maybe not everyone can easily do that, but as prices go up, fewer people will want to live there, and units will start going unrented until prices come back down. But this is just basic economics. Supply and demand. Are you implying that that doesn't set the prices, and that landlords are leaving money on the table out of the kindness of their hearts? That seems unlikely to me.
randomdata 3y ago
Given that the population declined, without much evidence of housing being destroyed en-mass, it seems the problem is actually that people weren't coupling up during COVID – presumably because dating is hard during pandemic lockdowns and distancing measures – leaving more single people trying to find their own places. Those singles finding out there there is no longer enough housing for them is just a side effect.
pclmulqdq 3y ago
When people (including myself) talk about New York not being fun any more, it's almost always in relation to the price. Rent is incredibly expensive at this point, and that drives up the price of literally everything else, too. New Yorkers also don't understand that the "tier 2" cities in the US actually have most/all of the food, culture, and activities that they think are exclusive to New York. On the other hand, lots of New York evangelists in 2023 are lifers who have locked in their rent-stabilized apartment rates 20 years ago, and enjoy all the amenities that (largely) the rest of us are supposed to pay for.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > "tier 2" cities in the US actually have most/all of the food, culture, and activities that they think are exclusive to New York. I'm not knocking tier 2 cities or advocating NY, but that's just not true. Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    > Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world. I have a question for people who say this: Have you ever actually lived in any metropolitan area outside New York? I usually ask because the answer I usually get from New York exceptionalists is a dismissive version of "no," like "why would I live anywhere else?" A lot of cities (both in the US and around the world) have better environments for each of the things you stated there, but New York is somewhat unique in that it is good for all of them. Also, note that I am not talking about Cleveland as a "tier 2" city. New Yorkers think that San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles are "tier 2."
    - 3y ago
NickM 3y ago
People don’t believe it, but cities used to be cheap. I wasn't really aware of this, but was just wondering about it the other day, as it seems like logically they should be cheaper; economies of scale ought to help for both housing and infrastructure, I would think. Interesting to hear that expensive cities aren't necessarily inevitable.
- zachkatz 3y ago
  Basically all the housing in NYC—from the brownstones in Bed-Stuy to the high rises on the Upper East Side—were built during the early 20th century when there was a huge population boom, to provide affordable housing for literally millions of people. We need to keep doing that. NYC doesn’t need a few thousand more apartments—it needs hundreds of thousands more apartments.
wolverine876 3y ago
Don't forget the RealPage collusion by landlords, which pushed up rents considerably (in NYC too?) https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

by cglan 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago
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necrotic_comp 3y ago

This is true. It's so depressing to have your salary and responsibility go up, but still have the same living circumstances as you did when you had your first job out of college. I still don't have a laundry machine or a thermostat, I have holes in my walls from when my landlord half-did things, my rent has gone up, and I'm expected to continue to do more and get more responsibility. Something's gotta give. I'm not sure what it's gonna be.

bequanna 3y ago

> It’s still great. I’ve been to NYC many times and have friends in their late 30s that live there. The ones that live there say the same (“it’s great”) but never elaborate. From the outside, it honestly looks like a dirty, difficult, chaotic city. Many restaurants, but all seem to be copy+paste coffee shop, Italian, etc or very low quality cafe/deli. Coming from the Midwest, it feels very old, dirty and poor yet somehow expensive and desirable. What am I missing?

4death4 3y ago
Dirty and poor compared to what?
- bequanna 3y ago
  If you haven’t, I’d suggest you visit a large or mid size city in a prosperous north Midwest state like Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, etc. People I know from the East Coast that have visited are typically floored by the quality of life in flyover country. Everything we have is new, life is affordable, top performing schools and communities are growing. The local governments are generally growth oriented with excellent infrastructure and relatively Low taxes. Oh, but maybe not as many Thai/niche ethnic restaurants, so there is that downside, ha. But beyond your 20s, why anyone would consider calling NYC home is beyond me. Quality of life for my family > proximity to restaurants and bands.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > a large or mid size city in a prosperous north Midwest state Which city?
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      It seems they gave you enough information: Minneapolis, Madison, Des Moines, Sioux Falls, Cedar Rapids.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  Virtually every other city anywhere in the western world, especially outside of the United States.
candiddevmike 3y ago
The cultural, nightlife, and entertainment aspects. All cities are varying degrees of old/disgusting.
CydeWeys 3y ago

shortrounddev2 3y ago

And new york decides the best way to solve this problem is to irrationally ban short term rentals rather than just building more housing

phailhaus 3y ago
If you don't ban short-term rentals and just build housing, how does that fix the problem? People will buy it up and just put it on AirBnB.
- varispeed 3y ago
  Supply and demand. At one point there should be enough supply that AirBnB will bring too little profit for people to be bothered. Things like AirBnB work precisely because the supply is constrained.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    I agree we should build more housing. But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists. Now maybe banning airbnb will put such a damper on tourism that it becomes a problem, but let's deal with that problem when it happens.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      > But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists Tourists bring in good tax dollars for the city since NYC has insane hotel taxes on top of the ridiculous cost of Hotels. From a moral perspective, it really shouldn't be anyone's business how a property owner decides to use their property. If they want to rent it on month-to-month leases or 12 month leases, it's up to them. If there's not enough permanent or long-term housing, then you need to deregulate NYC's byzantine zoning regulations and make it a lot easier to build whatever, wherever. Also you need to get rid of rent control; it is categorically proven to make things worse
    - 3y ago

4death4 3y ago

This would make sense if the population growth was increasing but at a slower rate. But, the population is actively declining. Somehow, 5.3% of people went from having housing to leaving, so I don’t think housing is the only story here.

chimeracoder 3y ago
> This would make sense if the population growth was increasing but at a slower rate. But, the population is actively declining. Somehow, 5.3% of people went from having housing to leaving, so I don’t think housing is the only story here. Yes, when your rent goes up 10-20% YoY and you simultaneously lose some or all of your income, you tend to leave. A lot of people left NYC in the last few years because they could not afford it, with housing being both the main expense and also the one that has increased the most in the last few years.
CydeWeys 3y ago
There's absolutely a housing shortage. Fewer people living in one unit is how you get a shrinking population while the housing supply remains static. And rent control exacerbates it, as you have literally over a million people that are a "locked into" their below-market rate units and can never leave because they'll never find anything that cheap elsewhere, regardless of whether they still need that much space. My great aunt for example is 101 years old and lives in a 3 bedroom apartment in Queens. 50 years ago there were 4 people living in that apartment (including her husband and her kids, all now dead). Plus there's the issue of renovations/demolitions that remove units and replace them with a smaller number of more expensive units.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  > Fewer people living in one unit is how you get a shrinking population while the housing supply remains static. No, that's not how normal distributions work. Among the 5.3%, some significant portion of those left empty housing units in their wake. They weren't all 3rd roommates that left.
  - 3y ago

jjulius 3y ago

>I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. >Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a cities of millions. I'm currently in my mid-30's. Throughout all of my 20's, I thought it would be a blast to live in NYC. Then I had a good stretch where I visited it a whole bunch of times, hanging out with friends and family who lived there, and you know what I noticed? Unless you were an older family member who owned a home/apartment, every younger person was renting and the topic of conversation among locals, both locals who knew each other and locals who just met one another, was about where they're living, how much their rent is, what kind of battle they had to go through to get the place, what kind of battles their friends went through to get their places, and then they'd compare the different amenities they had or didn't have. I watched these same conversations - some of which were told like war stories - play out again and again and again and again. Then, you get into the whole issue of bed bugs, how prevalent they are in NYC and how much of a nightmare it is to deal with them, and you realize that life in NYC is largely spent just trying to figure out how to have a place to live, and it suddenly feels incredibly stupid to bother to try and move there. The nightlife and entertainment and culture, as cool as they are, just aren't worth it if you're constantly hassling with such a basic need. But that's just me. /shrug

wolverine876 3y ago
> life in NYC is largely spent just trying to figure out how to have a place to live There's a lot going on in NYC, possibly more than anywhere in the world. And in fact, that's why people want to move there.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dotnet00 3y ago
Add in the considerations regarding moving every couple of years and doing it all over again. There's no long term stability to be had, so it's no wonder that people left when given the chance in the form of increased remote opportunities and a lifestyle "reset" in the form of covid.

ThomPete 3y ago

Agree. Food wise it's wild too. What used to be the price of an entres is now the price of an appetizer and the service have gotten down too. Getting a place you actually want to live 2 bedrooms is at least $4K we pay much more because we live in a nice building. But it's still a great city and I am sure somethings gotta give.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
Bad service means the economy is good. Haven't you heard of the hot waitress index?
parineum 3y ago
> and the service have gotten down too This is a tangent but mid and post pandemic, restaurant service seems to be significantly worse. Prices going up at least makes sense to me, prices are up everywhere, it is what it is and I can still afford to eat out. However, I find rarely do go out to restaurants now and service is a major part of that. Not to mention tipping percentages seems to have inflated on top of prices and for worse service... I tend to end up at more casual places where I'm ordering at the counter and my food comes out to me (bistro's I guess? I'm not sure what the term is) where I'm mostly on my own after that, getting my own silverware, drinks, napkins, etc.
steveBK123 3y ago
I ate at a place the other weekend in Brooklyn for lunch. Some small plates BS, so we had to get a number of items. Without drinks we are talking $50/head for a couple to have lunch, easily hitting $100/head if you drank. The table they sat my wife & I at was, I swear to you, 2 square feet. It was a protrusion from the shelving in the wall that they had placed 2 backless tools at. It was like taking a 16" MacBook Pro and unfolding it so it was splayed open... I got the keyboard and wife got the screen. We actually begged to be sat at the bar instead but they declined. At some point it's just not worth it anymore. I'm too old for this. Maybe zoomers living in small studio who are meeting randos for a date. I had less eating space than when I eat my sad salad lunch at my desk. Who needs that anxiety on a Sunday afternoon. I have dining seating in my apartment for 6-8 people and I'm hunched over a veritable coach flight tray table and paying for the privilege?

fny 3y ago

1. Most people rent not buy in NYC. There are plenty of rentals. 2. I’m in the market to buy, and I’ve been able to make bids below asking so I’m not sure demand is as high as you’d suggest.

misiti3780 3y ago
depends on the neighborhood. i suspect low bids are not possible in the west village or Williamsburg
henry2023 3y ago
"I've been able to make bids below asking so I'm not sure demand is as high as you'd suggest" You can have super high demand all making bellow asking bids if the asking price is irrational.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

crowcroft 3y ago

Interesting, is the housing supply decreasing at all, or are those houses sitting empty for long? If those houses are sitting empty for weeks then maybe there's going to be a bit of a correction (hard to imagine rent ever going down in NY though). If those houses aren't sitting empty for long, then maybe NY is going through a lot of churn. Will be interesting to see how NY changes over the next few years.

ylhert 3y ago

[flagged]

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Sure you can pay more and get something. But it used to be that you traded a lot of quality of life (in unit washer dryer, dishwasher, ac, no walkups, cars, space, etc) for a lower price and the social aspects of living in a city. On the other hand, if "every" landlord "just" asks for more, what the fuck is anyone going to do about it?

NickM 3y ago
Move away? I mean maybe not everyone can easily do that, but as prices go up, fewer people will want to live there, and units will start going unrented until prices come back down. But this is just basic economics. Supply and demand. Are you implying that that doesn't set the prices, and that landlords are leaving money on the table out of the kindness of their hearts? That seems unlikely to me.

randomdata 3y ago

Given that the population declined, without much evidence of housing being destroyed en-mass, it seems the problem is actually that people weren't coupling up during COVID – presumably because dating is hard during pandemic lockdowns and distancing measures – leaving more single people trying to find their own places. Those singles finding out there there is no longer enough housing for them is just a side effect.

pclmulqdq 3y ago

When people (including myself) talk about New York not being fun any more, it's almost always in relation to the price. Rent is incredibly expensive at this point, and that drives up the price of literally everything else, too. New Yorkers also don't understand that the "tier 2" cities in the US actually have most/all of the food, culture, and activities that they think are exclusive to New York. On the other hand, lots of New York evangelists in 2023 are lifers who have locked in their rent-stabilized apartment rates 20 years ago, and enjoy all the amenities that (largely) the rest of us are supposed to pay for.

wolverine876 3y ago
> "tier 2" cities in the US actually have most/all of the food, culture, and activities that they think are exclusive to New York. I'm not knocking tier 2 cities or advocating NY, but that's just not true. Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  > Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world. I have a question for people who say this: Have you ever actually lived in any metropolitan area outside New York? I usually ask because the answer I usually get from New York exceptionalists is a dismissive version of "no," like "why would I live anywhere else?" A lot of cities (both in the US and around the world) have better environments for each of the things you stated there, but New York is somewhat unique in that it is good for all of them. Also, note that I am not talking about Cleveland as a "tier 2" city. New Yorkers think that San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles are "tier 2."
  - 3y ago

NickM 3y ago

People don’t believe it, but cities used to be cheap. I wasn't really aware of this, but was just wondering about it the other day, as it seems like logically they should be cheaper; economies of scale ought to help for both housing and infrastructure, I would think. Interesting to hear that expensive cities aren't necessarily inevitable.

zachkatz 3y ago
Basically all the housing in NYC—from the brownstones in Bed-Stuy to the high rises on the Upper East Side—were built during the early 20th century when there was a huge population boom, to provide affordable housing for literally millions of people. We need to keep doing that. NYC doesn’t need a few thousand more apartments—it needs hundreds of thousands more apartments.

wolverine876 3y ago

Don't forget the RealPage collusion by landlords, which pushed up rents considerably (in NYC too?) https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...