quote:

---

Renters without high salaries have not been shut out of the market. They are squeezing in extra roommates or making alterations as never before much to the frustration of landlords. The rents for one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan average $2,567 a month, and two-bedrooms average $3,854 a month, according to data from Citi Habitats, a large rental brokerage company, but rents tend to be far higher in coveted neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and TriBeCa.

Because landlords typically require renters to earn 40 times their monthly rent in annual income, renters of those average apartments would need to earn at least $102,680, individually or combined, to qualify for a one-bedroom and $154,160 to afford a two-bedroom.

---

Even if you find a roommate and live in a 2 bdrm or 3 bdrm place they are totally ridiculous.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sven:
Doesn't NYC have rent control? That has the effect of driving rental rates sky high for those in the market for an apartment. Those people subsidize those living in rent-controlled apartments.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
I don't follow this logic. Wouldn't it be a shortage of housing in general that allows slumlords to demand outrageous rents while such places fall apart from neglect ?. We've got to think like capitalists when understanding the market in substandard housing and homelessness: let the roach motel earn cash with the least financial inputs legally(and sometimes illegally) possible, and let the poor slobs on social assistance and disability pensions pay your mortgage... three or four times over.

---

Are you saying that most of the landlords in Manhattan are “slumlords” or are you saying that a landlord is, by definition, a “slumlord”?

We need more affordable, energy efficient housing in general. Hire some demolition crews - build some housing - up with the GDP and all that, because we're supposed to be a rich country here. If they can't afford to be proper capitalists, then perhaps they can be successful elsewhere. A report from B.C. says it costs more to operate a shelter than if they just built some basic affordable housing for people in need of roofs over their heads.

[ 14 May 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by trippie:
another crime of Capitalism...

You can afford a decent place to live in a major
city but at the same time you can't be a squater...

---

Nothing is stopping you and other like-minded folks from investing their hard-earned savings in low-income housing.

quote:

---

Also, while the mean price is higher, there might also be a greater variance in price due to super expensive homes, and thus there would be some lower cost housing, perhaps 1000 a month or so.

---

While there are definitely incredibly expensive apartments there the bottom end is not "lower cost" by any means. The rents discussed in the article are pretty much the norm and, if you can find anything much cheaper, there is something very wrong with it.

quote:

---

On their salaries and their taxes, that's not so bad.

---

And New York City itself imposes its own income tax.

[ 19 May 2007: Message edited by: abnormal ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):
Of course, it's easy to pay $3000 per month in rent if you earn $500K. On the other hand, you can also do what others who work in Manhattan are doing: move either to other boroughs in NYC (Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island) or move to Hoboken NJ or Jersey City NJ. These places are a $1 train ride to Manhattan.

---

Is it that cheap!? Wow. Not surprising though. Suburban transit out to other areas of New Jersey from New York is incredibly cheap. I'm talking like $10 a trip, and cheaper if you buy the passes in bulk. Pretty amazing transit they've got going on there.

All in taxes for living in NYC come to about 60% and yes, lawyers and investment bankers living in NY pay themselves more to compensate for that. And do you have to sell your soul and lifestyle to make the big bucks. But, as we used to say, "Hey, it's only your soul."

For those of you who can't countenance people working a 100 hours a week, sacrificing family and life for money., there are alot of other people willing to do so. It's so different than Canada- you as an individual are free to make your choices without politically correct politics telling you how to live your life. It's a fluid society where the working class are upwardly mobile. Sometimes, in Canada people refer to the working class as an unchanging condtion. The truth is everyone wants to better themselves and NY embodies that dream.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bobby Peru:
...but there is no city like it....have to sell your soul and lifestyle to make the big bucks. But, as we used to say, "Hey, it's only your soul."

For those of you who can't countenance people working a 100 hours a week, sacrificing family and life for money., there are alot of other people willing to do so.

---

Have you been to every city in the world to make such a compare?

quote:

---

It's so different than Canada- you as an individual are free to make your choices without politically correct politics telling you how to live your life.

---

Frankly, I have never had politically correct politics telling me to live my life, and I think you been listening to too many libertarians spouting nonsense.

quote:

---

It's a fluid society where the working class are upwardly mobile.

---

Yes, I have noticed how the under classes monopolize the coporate elite, the political landscape and power structures in the USA.

quote:

---

and NY embodies that dream.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
If NYC is such a great city, then why did Joe Buck and Rico head for Florida in the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy ?.

---

[ 19 May 2007: Message edited by: jrootham ]

quote:

---

Michelle, you simply can't make a straight comparison with NY prices with Toronto or Vancouver without comparing the quality of life and vibrancy you get in New York. I don't know how many of you have lived in New York, but there is no city like it. And certainly, Vancouver certainly lives up to its reputation of 'no fun city' when compared to the art and culture that NYC offers. It certainly gave me an opportunity to go from working class Vancouver to a whole different world.

---

Yep, bin ta Nu Yokk twice--and it truly is one of the most diverse and cultured and in many ways fun cities in the world. It is, like any other place anywhere, predominantly working class--and, like most other places, it is that class that creates its culture and economy--and don't you forget it.

Sadly, though, like most cities and their working class, New York has among the worst urban poverty rates in the industrialized world--almost as bad as the Southern US slave (often falsely called "right to work" states).

Seriously, these stats are about at the same, and in some cases worse, than urban poverty inEastern European cities during the Soviet/state capitalist era (although overall better than those cities today after all the privatization and social infrastructure cuts).

And of course, New York’s crime and pollution rates are legendary—as in legendary bad.

quote:

---

And do you have to sell your soul and lifestyle to make the big bucks. But, as we used to say, "Hey, it's only your soul."

---

And that’s one of the key features of any type of capitalist economy: we don’t work to live; we, by oppressive artificially induced poverty and scarcity, have to live to work. And that’s sadly getting worse--even more prevalent in the US as it is here in Canada.

quote:

---

It's so different than Canada- you as an individual are free to make your choices without politically correct politics telling you how to live your life.

---

Right, and pink elephants fly to the moon.

Structural Unemployment at Crisis Levels

Suppression of the free speech and thought in Canada

Loyalty and Obedience Essential for a Career

Workforce Loyalty: Re-aligning employees' values and goals to those of the employer

Corporate managing of worker loyalty, behaviour and relationships to improve productivity

Bosses suppressing workers' freedom of speech

Suppression of free speech and thought is key to union-busting

quote:

---

It's a fluid society where the working class are upwardly mobile.

---

Yep, and so was Nazi Germany, right?

When the federal government stats show the richest one per cent of people hold or control 37 per cent of the total wealth of this country, and the richest five per cent control 80 per cent-- and the dictators who control it directly want more—don’t dish out this crap that it’s upwardly mobile.

And as a matter of fact, the working class is a permanent feature, since it includes the vast majority of human beings who do the productive work in creating tradable wealth and create the consumer markets and economies to recirculate that wealth, and only a tiny minority of select people end up holding various positions of undemocratic control of wealth and power in any economy.

As for sky-high rents, that has become as much a problem of a wages continuing to lag further behind the cost of living, as it is demand vs. supply.

That fact is usually, when interest rates are relatively low and thus mortgages become more affordable, housing prices begin to rise, and rental rates either stagnate or fall due to lower demand (most people would rather spend money on buying a place than just renting).

However, today, with record-low interest rates resulting in legions of people qualifying for mortgages (leading to a construction boom and huge housing and real estate price increases), rents are still expensive--not because they have risen, but because people's spending power has diminished, thanks to wages not keeping up with the cost of living and inflation.

Despite the low-interest-rate-fuelled housing and real estate boom, people are getting poorer for this same reason, and this so-called "boom" is being funded by borrowed money as working class consumer debt is at an all-time high and personal savings are at an all-time low.

People are simply buying out of desperation that this low-interest window will let them get a place they otherwise could not even dream of having.

I don't like to think of what will happen when interest rates do climb by one to two per cent--as they eventually will as the big-money dictators (IMF, World Bank, WTO, international banks/speculators) all get hyped about inflation.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Seriously, these stats are about at the same, and in some cases worse, than urban poverty inEastern European cities during the Soviet/state capitalist era (although overall better than those cities today after all the privatization and social infrastructure cuts).

---

If you ever speak with someone who lived in the former USSR, ask them about rents and homelessness then compared with today. And I think you'll be surprised.