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NYC: Death of a Once Great City

Isn’t there something between your extremes though? The city could easily require a certain density level for new residential buildings and/or grand much larger tracts of land to builders. If you stick enough housing units, the prices will go down.
 
WFU03 said:
Isn’t there something between your extremes though? The city could easily require a certain density level for new residential buildings and/or grand much larger tracts of land to builders. If you stick enough housing units, the prices will go down.
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Why? They could easily build more units that would be bought by speculators instead of residents. They could be rented by wealthier people.
 
PhDeac said:
Why? They could easily build more units that would be bought by speculators instead of residents. They could be rented by wealthier people.
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You can also put in residency requirements if you want to discourage that. Many "summer" towns in Norway did just that to discourage people from only occupying the houses for a month or two and creating a ghost town for the rest of the year. Yes, people can try to get around any sort of regulation, but if your goal is to have more people actually living there rather than investing, you can do some things to get much closer to achieving that.

The big issue is that decreasing property prices would infuriate existing owners.
 
That’s a huge issue.

Residency requirements would address some issues but not the fact that residents who can afford to pay more would eventually drive up the cost for everyone else or shut poor residents out of the market.
 
Sure. Don't get me wrong. Even if you added a million units overnight in Manhattan and had the best crafted residency requirements imaginable, the poorest people wouldn't live in them. You'd still have the same basic distribution of wealth/residency as you have now (people who can/want to pay more living in Manhatttan), but the prices would go down across the board in all of the metro area.
 
And for housing, the studies show that simply increasing supply does not reduce price like most commodities.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
And for housing, the studies show that simply increasing supply does not reduce price like most commodities.
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I’m going to guess that’s because anybody from anywhere can buy a house. There’s more than enough people who can buy a house so it doesn’t strain demand.
 
And because it’s value as real estate is not directly tied to its value as a place to live. It’s why 1,000 square feet varies so much across the country but a tube of toothpaste costs roughly the same.
 
There are as many poor people living on the upper west side as rich people. The UWS side is probably the most densely populated neighborhood in the city with rent stabilized apartments. The supply would lower the avg rental price significantly if the city weren't subsidizing homeless shelters or throwing out tax breaks to developers who build "afforadable" housing in the world's most expensive zip codes. example- The city opened up an emergency shelter a few blocks away from me and pays the developer $3500 a month to house a homeless people in the entire building. Thats a one bedroom apartment. Its a ridiculous waste of tax payer money. For some reason city politicians determined that it was a person's "right" to live in Manhattan and that they would house everyone that needs it. The city spends $1.4 billion each year on shelter housing alone.

I don't care what realtor.com says, but if you value your safety as well as the bare minimum of space, a market rate minimum for a 2 bedroom apartment is close to 3k and a 3 bedroom is closer to 4k (with no ammenities really).
 
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JuiceCrewAllStar said:
We started with:



and now we'reat



So, in a neighborhood with over 200,000 people, there are 12 units for less than $3,300, which would be 40% of a household's income at ~$100k annually. With NYC's $15 minimum wage, three minimum wage earners in one household would not make enough for those units if they aimed to keep housing costs (and this doesn't include utilities) below 40%, which is well over the prescribed financially health amount, but we're allowing for reduced transit costs. And yet they would make far too much to be considered for public or subsidized affordable housing (link: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/hpd/renters/what-is-affordable-housing.page).

The question is not whether a working class family can live in the Upper West Side -- they can't -- but whether we are okay with a housing system where a working class family cannot live in the UWS.


And while I may be off on the fact that new construction in Manhattan is not replacing tear-downs of existing housing (like it is in Brooklyn), it does not change the fact that new construction is almost exclusively luxury, as a rational developer will build in the existing market.
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Bro. You cherry picked 3 bedrooms for your argument, when there are plenty of families with 2 and even 3 kids in 2 bedroom apartments in NYC and other big cities. You double standarded yourself with the "its only 800 square feet". The new buildings definitely are luxury - no one is denying that - but as they build more of those, there are still a ton of pre-war and walkups all over the upper west side that a two worker household can afford. Will they spend all their money on rent and food? Probs, but its definitely doable. You continue to argue a weird ass point.

Someone just posted there is options to live in the UWS at less, but its a trade off - you want a 3 or 4 bedroom for cheap? Great, you live in the projects - plenty of people do. And not only that, you can live up in Harlem for much less and take the 1 train and be in the UWS in like 10 minutes, if you really want to - and there are plenty of decent places in Harlem. Or you can go to the Lower East Side, live with the rats and druggies and get an affordable-ish place, or you go to Bushwick or LIC or Astoria or wherever - there are places all over the city to live, and none are that far away by train.
 
I live in a 3BR in west Harlem, and we pay $2700 total. Can get to the UWS in 10 minutes or go express and get to Midtown in 15 minutes. My hood definitely has a little grit to it, but never have had a problem walking home late at night and have never felt unsafe. DaDeacs is on the money here. Probably will be moving back to Astoria soon to get a place on my own again now that school is over.
 
The goalposts have moved from there are tons of options in UWS to there are a few options in UWS to there are options near the UWS.

The whole point is that the market does not naturally produce affordable housing to working class families. They're relegated to the areas where wealthy people don't want to live. Previously, it was the inner city; now that that is fashionable, they've been pushed back out to the suburbs. That displacement is occurring in urban environments isn't really up for debate, it is happening.

And to stan gable's point, removing the cap on affordability and programs that produce them does not actually induce affordability, at least nowhere near the scale that the subsidized rent allows for. New luxury developments do not decrease price by lowering demand: https://ny.curbed.com/2016/2/11/110...rentals-is-driving-up-apartment-prices-in-nyc

Again, you can believe -- as it seems stan does -- that certain locations should not be accessible to lower- and moderate-income people. But you need to explain why access to certain spaces -- not amenities -- should be based on income/wealth.
 
This discussion from the commielib side is amazing, as their hipster hubris completely blinds them from their customary big picture goals. From an actual standard of living and class mobility standpoint, this is the best thing to happen to working class city dwellers. The rich people living in the city still need their standard services, as was discussed earlier, and they will pay drastically more for them than they are otherwise worth. So the working class dude makes $60k commuting to the city working the same job that would get him $40k anywhere else. He can't afford to live in the city, so he takes his $60k and lives in the burbs where he can buy a bigger house, nicer car, and other quality of life increases that he would never see while living in the city.

How do you think all the NJ guidos got their (legal) family money 50 years ago? Basically this same strategy. Would Joey Goombah have been able to afford his routine new cars and shore house if he had stayed in the city his entire sanitation career? Hell no, but he took advantage of a relatively short commute to get wildly overpaid for his job and capitalized on the value of his city money outside of the city. It is natural wealth redistribution and upward mobility through nothing other than location variation. Any idiot can take advantage of it, but millennials value city living so much that they would rather live in a shitty cramped hipster apartment just so they can say they do, as opposed to actually leveraging the value of their money to increase their standard of living.
 
Things I learned in this thread: Juice doesn't read.

Also, there are more wake people in UWSish area. If any NYC wake people want to dog sit for me this weekend, I need help, cause that shit is expensive.
 
You mean the sanitation workers that were required by law to live in the five boroughs until 2005?
 
Life Plan: Live in Passaic and commute into Manhattan to take care of DaDeacs' dogs at elevated prices. Cha-Ching ! Buy new cars and shore house.
 
stupid poors, don't you realize the great deal you get by having a nice commute to the big city to serve the wealthy? how else are you going to catch up on all your podcasts
 
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