N.Y.C. so costly you need to earn six figures to make middle class

N.Y.C. so costly you need to earn six figures to make middle class

BY ELIZABETH HAYS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, February 6th 2009, 1:04 PM

More than $2,000 a month for day care. Some of the highest phone bills in the country. Jam-packed, 50-plus-minute commutes to work.

You knew it was tough to live in New York City — but this tough?

A new report shows just how ugly — and expensive — New York City can be, especially for the middle class, squeezed by skyrocketing living costs and stagnant wages.

The study, released Thursday by the Center for an Urban Future, shows that New York City is hands-down the most expensive place to live in the country.

Among the findings:

“Income levels that would enable a very comfortable lifestyle in other locales barely suffice to provide the basics in New York City,” the report concludes.

Other belt-tightening details include:

It’s not only money that makes life here hard, researchers said — which might not be news to most New Yorkers.

Take commutes, for example. The report found that many New Yorkers put up with commutes double the national average of 25.5 minutes.

Commuting to Manhattan from St. Albans, Queens, can take 51.7 minutes, while getting there from Canarsie, Brooklyn, can run 50.8 minutes.

Researchers said the combination of skyrocketing costs, stagnant wages and a deteriorating quality of life forced hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to flee the city for cheaper areas during the boom years from 2002 to 2006.

The report found that more New Yorkers left each year during the boom than left during the dark days of the early 1990s.

Center for Urban Future Director Jonathan Bowles noted that the number of people fleeing the city has slowed since 2007 as the rest of the country has sunk into recession, jobs have dried up nationwide and home values here started to sink.

Mayor Bloomberg downplayed the report but said he is concerned about the constant drumbeat of job losses in the city.

“There is turnover all the time. That’s very healthy,” Bloomberg said. “We’re doing fine, but it is very worrisome, the number of people who are losing their jobs.”

eh✧✧✧@nydailyn✧✧✧.c✧✧

With Adam Lisberg

People are probably going to start pouring out of here soon ... I even regret being here now. Quality of life's turning to shit, it's still super expensive, and future job prospects look absolutely bleak since the engine that ran NYC for the past 10 years will never, ever return. and that engine was supposed to replace all the work that was forced out of New York.

So now New York no longer has its cash cow, and it doesn't have the jobs it got rid of to feed the thing. Good place to be.

NYT in nonstory trendpiece shockah. thanks for the newsflash that life is hard in a big city!

You're a transplant, right?

i refuse to read this article

Note to that: for most of NYC's existence it was a lower middle class / middle class city up until very recently. That is why people make a big deal over it.

native brooklyn girl, now living in los angeles, but it's not like i fled the city or anything. (xpost)

people were crowing about gentrification in the 80s! mostly in manhattan, but still.

That article is talking about NYC as a whole, and it's not about gentrification, it's about the phasing out of low and middle income jobs in favor of a service + top 1% economy (basically super poor and super rich). That only happened really, really recently.

Anyone who wants to give me shit about looking into relocating to other cities can suck it.

i know some middle-income people (not six figures) who manage to live okay in brooklyn and queens. not everybody gets the $2000/mo. yuppie day care.

i've been surprised at how many of my friends are suddenly at least talking abt leaving. most have been here a decade or more too. i haven't seriously entertained it, beyond having to consider that a lot of my friends might all be gone by this time next year...

You know some middle income people who do OK, I know some people who rent huge apartments in Manhattan for $400/month. Big whoop.

NYC has no future right now ... finance will never be the same, particularly since no politician has the balls to take the measures needed to fix the thing, and everything else is already gone. Even my creative gigs were outsourced to Pennsylvania the other year.

So it's like, where is this city going to go? Bloomberg is blowing smoke up everyone's assholes, particularly since he doesn't want to take any credit for encouraging the mess NYC's economy is in now. Nobody even wants to talk about realistic solutions, let alone go about fixing problems.

NYT in nonstory trendpiece shockah.

Just for the record, NY Daily News =/= NYT ... the Daily News's target audience is actually the one that'd feel this issue most acutely (and the one that'd actually be commuting from St. Albans or Canarsie), whereas the NYT lately seems to imagine its demographic as a bunch of mystified recession idiots sharing cost-saving tips about how actually you can buy perfectly good clothes from something called "J Crew" and eat an entire dinner out for less than $400

You know some middle income people who do OK, I know some people who rent huge apartments in Manhattan for $400/month.

o_O

You don't know what that means, do you.

If it means that they live in rent-controlled apartments, then it means nothing for anyone without that golden ticket living in NYC.

Just for the record, NY Daily News =/= NYT ... the Daily News's target audience is actually the one that'd feel this issue most acutely (and the one that'd actually be commuting from St. Albans or Canarsie), whereas the NYT lately seems to imagine its demographic as a bunch of mystified recession idiots sharing cost-saving tips about how actually you can buy perfectly good clothes from something called "J Crew" and eat an entire dinner out for less than $400

which is, to say ... gabbneb!

Not to mention that I wanna know which rent-controlled apartment STILL only costs $400/month.

srsly my boss last summer who i believe was running a business illegally out of a rent controlled apt (you're not allowed to do that, right?) was paying 3 times that.

also, NYC has seen bad times (including some REAL bad times) before -- and has bounced back (although it has taken a long time). this isn't unprecedented, really.

My rent here is still more reasonable than in DC, and my commute is the same. Of course, I was never unemployed for more than two weeks in DC (unless I wanted to be). It has been two months up here. I still think it is a better value. Without a car, I can still both live in a cheap neighborhood and access the whole of the city for work. Of course, if my roommates had prevailed and we had taken an apartment on one of the subway lines facing cuts, I would be fucked.

then again, NYC wasn't so yuppified even during the mid/late 90s. this does add an entirely different element to this particular economic shit-bin.

yeah, other big cities may be "cheaper" if you don't add in the necessity of having a car to live in the less-costly parts of town (that goes for philly as well as DC).

I'm just kidding around. We all have those friends with those rare rent controlled apartments, and they say, "stop bitching about your rent! get a Manhattan apartment for 500/month just like me!" It's about taking a very rare incident and making it seem really common, and holding it against anyone who doesn't have similar luck.

I think this bad time is unprecedented in NYC, or at least dissimilar to other precedents -- in the mid-late 90s the city started kicking out all its old industries in favor of big finance, big real estate, and a low tier of service work. Big finance is toast, big real estate is following, and so now what... try to get back all the old work or something?

In the 70s and 80s you at least had all the factories, shipping, the garment district, more creative work, etc. It's just about all gone now in favor of finance, and finance is gone now, too.

which is perhaps why they're predicting NYC is going to have the highest unemployment of all cities in the US pretty soon

You can all move up to my neighborhood. Within walking distance of the 1 and A, only 800-1000$ a month rent, and the convenience of drug dealers every other corner.

NYC may be extreme re the concentration of finance jobs, but other cities aren't THAT much different re what kinds of jobs they had for the past few decades. i mean, how much manufacturing is left in boston, philly, or DC?!?

Read the article ... for example, manufacturing is 7-10% of the economy in other cities compared to 1-2% in NYC.

Don't you remember the big stink when Bloomberg was trying to pressure the ship yards to give up the land for high-rise waterfront condos? I bet he doesn't want people to remember that pretty soon.

XPOST
Yes. Given that I am another service industry parasite, I was kind of hoping the yuppies were going to pay for my record and synth addiction, at least until I could make them pay for themselves. Oh well.

XPOST again
DC has the government, and the stability of those jobs stabilizes lots of the retail and commercial worlds. DC spends more money per capita going out for food than NYC does, and I am sure this will be even more true soon (which is why I HATE the arrogance of NY restaurant managers looking down on my DC experience! My old busboys can bartend circles around most of the bartenders in this city, and I had to bus before I could barback, and barback before I could bartend.)

Not to mention that I wanna know which rent-controlled apartment STILL only costs $400/month.

― Mordy, Sunday, 8 February 2009 01:12 (6 hours ago)

Actually I just found out that a friend of mine pays $400 for a rent-controlled apartment on the LES.

those rent control people are a totally different breed. they see things on the whole rent control perspective ... like they live in this new world of secret low rents that becomes totally normal to them. so when you talk to them about your market rate apartment, they're like, "dude, you're a total sucker! i'm only paying $400 to live on Central Park West! you are such a newbie!"

or if you complain about groceries and they laugh at you for paying $1.00 for bananas because he knows this chinese lady and she hooks him up for .29 lb. I really hate that guy.

This apartment is actually in her family for a couple of generations too. My folks had one like that in midtown when I was born but they ditched it.

the only time I ever got to taste the joys of rent controlled living was this shit hole in Bensonhurst. I was out of there in a week, but man oh man, this place like ... a palace, right near the N train, $600/month. Terrible condition, though, .... like, Dateline NBC kinda thing. or at least FOX 5's Shame On You with Erneie Anastoas that dirty greek.

or if you complain about groceries and they laugh at you for paying $1.00 for bananas because he knows this chinese lady and she hooks him up for .29 lb. I really hate that guy.

― burt_stanton, Sunday, February 8, 2009 2:33 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

If that guy doesn't then also offer to hook you up with his Chinese lady, that is really hate-worthy.

But I do often find myself talking to people in NYC and thinking "You are an assistant editor. What the HELL are you doing shopping in Dean and Deluca, getting regular spa treatments, etc." The lifestyle pressure is a big part of what makes New York "expensive" for a lot of people.

New York can eat my ass. I really bet on wrong horse here. The ghosts of the past are everywhere here, maaan ... gotta go west for a new start.

I love watching the students in school who are new to New York (or the Northeast US in general), and you see this slow transformation ... from awful 1999 looking Old Navy shit, to say ... Urban Outfitters of J Crew ... and then graduating up to Ann Taylor Loft. A few experiment with an artier look, but most stick with the midtown prep kinda look.

cool well i hope jew york never recovers (peace)

which is, to say ... gabbneb!

nope i shop and spend the same as i always did. only times i've spent $400 on dinner were taking a group out for a special occasion tho.

actually i shop and eat out more now because i have the time

As if anyone in the USA has a clue what "middle class" even means.

^^This.

burt_stanton, you da expert of thread. how far west will all these people go?

would you like to explain that?
xpost

o plz

i make 37k in NYC and love plenty comfortably. pplz is spoiled, that's all. & it's ridic reading all these articles in the times abt how you need 100k or 500k to live middle class in nyc, as if there aren't hundreds of thousands of ppl living on 15k or less. assholes writing articles for spoiled, ungrateful assholes to read, if you ask me.

ptero brings up (intentionally or not) a good point. When was the last time a trend article from a long-time print establishment was relevant to people who mostly read their news on the internet? (Not assuming you are the latter, pterodactyl.. but it brought up the thought.)

Interesting article in the Guardian about the amount of work grandparents put in, and how there should be a system to give them tax breaks, allowances, grants etc. (although it comes under a headline about nurseries preparing kids better for school)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/10/grandparents-childcare-pre-school

i wish we lived near some grandparents or family. i think that's another thing in nyc, a lot of people end up living here without nearby extended family, which cuts down on the child care alternatives.

and yeah, sorry, i didn't mean to be all defensive. i know it sounds like a lot of money, it does to me too. i was sort of staggered when i realized what we were going to end up paying. kids are costly.

With two it almost becomes practical for one person to just stop working..

Definitely. We lived in the Bay Area for a while and it made no sense for both of us to work, given what childcare would have costed. Out here in flyover country it's a much different story, and ditto for France as I understand it (no idea about the UK).

The UK is v v bad for childcare, especially under-threes

Any UK politician who could significantly bring down the cost of nurseries for parents would set his party up for a generation

I imagine it matters somewhat whether you're living in London vs elsewhere, but yeah, this is an issue that could use addressing. On the other hand, it's wrapped up with delicate gender role matters so I can see why politicians avoid it.

Yah even in DC we will be paying slightly more than $2K/month for decent basic daycare for two.

But one person not working so as to avoid the daycare cost can be shortsighted - that way all the burden of paying the bills is on one person (and on that one person's prospects for continuous employment). There's significantly risk involved if that person is laid off / fired / sick / whatever. Plus the person who takes time off later needs to reenter a workforce that tends to favor continuity of employment. So even if we were losing money in the strict cash in - cash out sense, I would prefer to have us both working at least some.

It is 'spensive, and we're not talking about gold-plated looxury or nonstop hookers & blow.

um "significant risk" obv

My dad and his wife did the sensible thing in the U.K. and waited until he was 60 to have kids. He retired on a full pension, and is now a stay at home dad. I think he had other plans for his retirement like seeing South America and Asia, but now he just emails me photos of him and my baby brother sledging. So my tip is, wait until you are 60 and sacrifice your retirement and having full-time childcare in the U.K. is totally affordable.

And won't somebody PLEASE think of the fashion designers?

"It was going to be a SoHo-hobo collection," Valvo says. "It was going to be all crazy patchwork made from recycled fabric, worn with fingerless, homeless gloves and construction boots. It was going to be my 'Grapes of Wrath' collection."

Haha what. THE FUCK goes through the heads of people like this.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n273/imrickjamesbitch2006/Mugatu.jpg

I thought you always had to earn six figures to make (upper) middle class.

Won't somebody think of the Manhattan bankers??

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

Is it time for show trials and public hangings yet?

I've never been an advocate of violence, but if I ever heard someone whining about how hard it is to live on $500k, I would punch them in the throat without hesitation.

yea, some relatives of mine were talking about how a $250,000 salary "isn't that much money" (they're married, no kids, in their 40s), and i was just thinking, "uh, that's exactly 10 times more than i make"

That's idiotic.

$100K is a lot of money, it just doesn't go as far as you would expect it to (esp. if you buy property and own a car). All of these whiners are doing is proving that they have no concept of money management.

won't somebody think of the strawmen

I've never been an advocate of violence, but if I ever heard someone whining about how hard it is to live on $500k, I would punch them in the throat without hesitation.

LOL i actually had a college friend who went to work on Wall Street after graduation who made this same comment -- and this was back in 1995!

also, $100K really ISN'T that much money in NYC (though it certainly doesn't reduce one to anything near abject poverty, not even in NYC). $250K is still damn good money in NYC, though, unless your tastes are like those of an Arab sheikh.

that said, i'd be careful complaining about "only" having to live on $100K even w/ other folks in NYC ... you still won't get much sympathy.

Seriously. Maybe its not as much as they want it to be, but.. uh, thats life. Get one helmet and cut back on the needless shit.

$100,000 maybe isn't "that much" for a two-income household, is what I'd say. It's still a lot for one person.

I Want to Live Like the Folks on Friends / Sex and the City Factor

(ie, want to be punched in the throat)

With two it almost becomes practical for one person to just stop working..

In Belgium most women cut back on working hours or stop altogether. You're financially better off, really, as daycare is quite expensive (of course not 2000 dollars per month, unless you're putting'em in daycar full time). Daycare is still hard to get though: If I wanted to get my kids in daycare (full-time, five days per week) I'd basically had to warn them three years before I got pregnant (exaggerating a little bit).

$100K/yr in income has long held totemic significance as a sign that one has "made it." hell, it STILL does since the majority of this country will never earn that much in one year (even if married). but it doesn't go as far as those who don't earn that much think that it does, especially not in expensive metropolitan areas like NYC (or anywhere else b/w DC and Boston, i think). and, a $100K salary loses its luster compared to the truly obscene salaries paid to some folks in NYC (though that's changing now for OBVIOUS reasons). also, many folks making that much money also have large student loan debt that isn't easily dischargeable in a bankruptcy court. someone who makes $100K can live a decent upper-middle class lifestyle (esp. as Laurel pointed out if one is single), but you still have to watch your budget if you don't want to end up with massive credit card debts.

I understand all that, I'm just reacting to that article linked to above. It seemed like these people think its their god-given right to have a $16,000 vacation twice a year. Uh, no.

I realize I'm proving your point of several posts ago, but that's ridiculous. I have zero credit card debt on less than half of a hundred thousand dollars. Plus no one is entitled to an "upper middle class" lifestyle, so I don't know why all the crocodile tears -- I/you/we are INCREDIBLY LUCKY if we can claim to live that well.

Sorry, xp.

Also, any shred of understanding for the people described in that article was gone by the time they got to purchasing $15,000 dresses for charity events, x3.

      Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder
      Why it should be thus all the day long;
      While there are others living about us,
      Never molested, though in the wrong.
            Farther along we’ll know more about it,
            Farther along we’ll understand why;
            Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
            We’ll understand it all by and by.
      Often when death has taken our loved ones,
      Leaving our home so lone and so drear,
      Then do we wonder why others prosper,
      Living so wicked year after year.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51euxGdjEsL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I understand all that, I'm just reacting to that article linked to above. It seemed like these people think its their god-given right to have a $16,000 vacation twice a year. Uh, no.

hey guys note that none of the subjects of the article are quoted or complaining in it - it's just a piece to try to explain how much "these people" spend now and why a $500k salary would substantially impact that.

Right -- it's an article idea dreamed up by watching too much cable news and going, "OH NO IS IT TRUE? OBAMA IS GOING TO MAKE PPL POOR!" and then going out to the upper east side to find subjects to support that half-assed and foregone conclusion.

It’s not only money that makes life here hard, researchers said — which might not be news to most New Yorkers.

This is hard-hitting stuff right here.

Journalism tip: if you're writing an article and at some point you realize you have written a sentence that says, "Keep in mind, my premise is flimsy and unsupported even by the sources that I do have, much less anyone else," you can just go ahead and kill yourself. You're done.

^^^ scathing media critique

im not sure the kenan-directed suicide of styles writers is the best way to cure journalism of its ills!

the kenan-directed suicide of styles writers

One of the Manic Street Preachers' most obscure B-sides.

it was just a tip

I have nine other tips, if you want the whole list.

They all do end in suicide, though.

what if richey james edwards really absconded to become a wall street day trader?!?

in a banana suit suit even

The "gay downtown demimonde" loves a depression! Says one scholar, one dipshit.

http://www.observer.com/print/82205/full

“In the ’70s, for the first time in New York, investing in gay businesses such as a bar or a disco or a bathhouse could actually be a profitable and an attractive investment for gay men because they’re not dealing with either the police or organized crime,” John D’Emilio, professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said. “In New York, there were more gay bars opening and gay bathhouses and the disco scene develops by ’73 or ’74. The city was in economic crisis, but gay male society was thriving.”

...“Gays love a recession because we hate the capitalist economy that’s found in the hetero-normative patriarchy anyways,” said the young man, a law-firm drone by day and a performer and go-go dancer by night. “I say burn the motherfucker down! Right? Fuck Prop 8! Who gives a fuck? We should burn down Wall Street and take over New York.”

He took a sobering breath.

“Gays are the only people with dispensable money—dispensable income or whatever?” he said, telling us he was a Sarah Lawrence grad. “Well, not for me personally.”

So we wondered what he was doing out.

“I’m like $60,000 in debt from school,” he said. “I’m fucked anyway.”

I hate gays.

lol "dispensable income"

glad to see dude put his $60K of schooling to good use

many lawyers (gay or straight) would kill to have their student loan debt burden only be $60K ;_;

“Gays are the only people with dispensable money—dispensable income or whatever?” he said, telling us he was a Sarah Lawrence grad. “Well, not for me personally.”

http://fawny.org/blog/2003/07/#richer-h1

Pretty awesomely merciless way to frame that quote.