This article fails to mention that the middle class can't afford to live in the "nicest parts" of cities, but many cities have other areas as well. Take NYC for example. Sure, if you want to live in the Chelsea or West Village neighborhoods in Manhattan, it's going to cost you. But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent part of Queens for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class. Unfortunately, though, the most desirable areas of the densest part of the city is being reserved for poor and upper class, which I think is the point of the article.
> But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent part of Queens for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class.
Do you have kids? Because this glib reaction signals that you don't, or you'd be aware that the areas you are touting as affordable have terrible public schools. That's why they're relatively cheap. That, and the hour-plus commutes (each way) to where most middle-class jobs are.
There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train.
We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what a "middle class" family "deserves," i.e. lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having roommates when young, not owning a car, et cetera.
> There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train.
Nonsense. I'm a New Yorker. You literally CAN'T get to DOWNTOWN Manhattan from any part of Connecticut in under an hour. The first metro-north stop in CT (Greenwich, which, BTW, is NOT affordable to live near) is over 40 minutes from Grand Central at the best of times. And then you have to change to the subway to get downtown. Nuh-uh. An hour each way is not happening.
I'm not sure what your point was about suburban deserts (in the sense of things deserved,) but the point of the article is that even with things like not owning a car priced in, housing (in cities with jobs) is still unobtanium for people in the hole between section 8 and tech salaries, who didn't already buy their homes when they were cheaper. Editorializing a bit, this sucks in the long-term. The upper east side of manhattan west of park, which was expensive before "gentrification" was a word, shows what this leads to: a limestone-clad desert made of vertical money and not much else.
> You literally CAN'T get to DOWNTOWN Manhattan from any part of Connecticut in under an hour
I live in Midtown. This time of year, I can't get downtown in less than an hour :).
It's reasonable for a productive person to demand any two of: space, a great location and disposable income.
My household of two chooses to enjoy our neck of Manhattan. We make do with like 400 square feet. If we had kids we would need to live in a city we get to enjoy less frequently or commute from the suburbs. Neither is particularly appealing to me, but I've heard kids are nice.
> "gentrification"...leads to a limestone-clad desert made of vertical money and not much else
Gentrification can lead to density in addition to urban deserts. Ironically, activists seem to prefer restricting housing supply. That means the latter.
Trying not to be uncharitable here, but, if you live in Midtown, then why are you making assertions about Connecticut?
Apparently you know your comment wasn't too truthful which is why you backed off with "I live in Midtown [..even so..] I can't get downtown in less than an hour". So, what exactly was the point of your comment?
Also note: household of 2 is not a household when talking about middle-class income. Why? Well, household of 2 adults is basically the best case scenario financially (both have jobs without additional dependents).
As a anecdote/data point: even making >300+k with both parents working still is a drag in NYC when you have 2 kids, regardless of what BS you hear online.
> if you live in Midtown, then why are you making assertions about Connecticut?
I've lived in Stamford. I would not want to live there again. Between ample space, proximity and disposable cash, I chose the latter two. If I wanted more space, Connecticut offers a fair deal for saving money or being close to the train station.
> you know your comment wasn't too truthful
Not sure why you went straight for the deep end. It's the holidays. I'm budgeting 45 minutes to the Upper West Side. The smiley implied facetiousness.
It's 50 minutes from Grand Central to Stamford [1]. That's comparable to the average American's 25-minute commute [2]. My core and recurring point is simply that cities are defined by density. If you want lots of space, you're fighting the current.
tbh, I went for the "deep end" because your formula that one needs to "choose 2" as a fact of life is weird to me.
Your point of "choose 2" isn't anything more than a compromise you've made. That is, not something that is "correct" but a compromise you've settled on. I'm happy for you to settle on that as a baseline for your life, but it irks me to hear you spout it as a "truth".
Cities are defined by density. What makes them valuable is density. Density is people per unit of space. You can do some things going vertically, but there are costs and limits associated with that, both practical and political.
Lots of people in high density means low average space per person. If you want more space it will be expensive and eat into your cash. If you want to keep that cash, you don't have options in a high-density city.
Yes, you can have all three with lots of cash. But you can't have a city with most having lots of space, because that means they live in low density and are no longer in a city.
>We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what a "middle class" family "deserves," i.e. lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having roommates when young, not owning a car, et cetera.
"People's lives are too good, we need to make them worse."
What's your angle? What do you gain from advocating against mobility and personal space? Are you upset because you didn't have these things, and don't want "undeserving" people to have them? Or do you just want us all to live in worse conditions for the fun of it? I genuinely can't understand what moves someone to push for "people should not have their own bedrooms or time-efficient commutes."
> What do you gain from advocating against mobility and personal space?
What works in the suburbs isn't sustainable in cities. Suburbia is built for personal spaces. It's terrible, however, at supporting the rich social fabrics densely-packed humans spontaneously weave. (There's also the problems of commute and it's environmental impact.)
City-centre richness is a direct product of density. If everyone gets large, personal spaces you're back to suburbia and all its disadvantages.
Living in a city means accepting less personal space in exchange for the benefits of density. The only alternative is to have fewer people with more personal space, which means rationing or auctioning off that limited housing as well as a less "city-like" urban core.
>If everyone gets large, personal spaces you're back to suburbia and all it's disadvantages.
This is true on the x-y plane but not the z-axis. We can have substantially more sqft available per sqft desired in the same land footprint by building up, which is currently heavily regulated or outright illegal.
I support more density, but the relationship between density and personal space isn't side-stepped by building up. You're just adding a vertical commute component.
It's better than yards and boulevards, but a building of three-bedroom apartments to the edge of space will have a different human dynamic from one with mostly one-bedrooms.
Well first, a 1-bedroom is the most expensive way to live, at the rate we're going we'll have 3-bedroom apartments with 3 families per bedroom instead of 3 bedrooms per family :). Back to the Industrial Revolution tenements.
You can get your human dynamic just fine on sidewalks, cafes, parks, etc. It doesn't need to be in-building. And even ~70 stories by elevator is still only a few minutes, nothing like the hour-plus train rides middle-class people in cities currently need to endure.
> You can get your human dynamic just fine on sidewalks, cafes, parks, etc.
More density means fewer [EDIT: more] people within walking distance of each café, park and restaurant. That, in turn, affects how many of them there are and how eclectic they can be.
Density is people over space. If you give each person more space, you reduce density. This can't be avoided.
> nothing like the hour-plus train rides middle-class people in cities currently need to endure
They don't need to endure it. Stamford, CT and Rochester or Port Jefferson, NY are nice cities with middling densities.
But many people don't want that. They want restaurants and nightclubs and parks with rotating art installations that only emerge and make sense when you pack people together.
Sure, you can put one or two large units in the mix without screwing things up. But not a lot, not for everyone. Else you end up with urban deserts.
>Some people don't want that--they want the restaurants and nightclubs and parks with rotating art installations that only emerge and make sense when you pack people together.
You really think a neighborhood of 70-story buildings can sustain these things as long as people share bedrooms, but can't the instant that children and young adults have their own doors to close?
>More density means fewer people within walking distance of each café, park and restaurant.
Vertical distance costs almost nothing in terms of time, given modern elevators and scheduling. I'll skip the cafe because it's a 40 minute walk instead of 10. You'd really skip the cafe because it's 20 floors down instead of 5? That's, like, one minute on a really bad day.
>If you give each person more space, you reduce density.
Well sure, but the advantages of density really come from compactness in time/ease of transportation rather than space. It doesn't matter that the restaurant is far away from its customers on the vertical axis, because elevators are fast.
Manhattan contained 854,000 housing units in 2014 [1] and 1.6 million residents between 2010 [2] and 2013 [3]. The average Manhattan unit has 1.2 to 1.3 bedrooms [4]. (For Core Manhattan, that average falls to 1.0 to 1.2.) So 1 to 1.1 million bedrooms.
If you mandated one bedroom per person you'd have to expel 31 to 38% of the population or increase the number of bedrooms by 45 to 60%.
Manhattan's 33.6 square miles [5] are populated with 70,826 people per square mile. If we go the culling-people route, that drops to 44,000 to 49,000 people per square mile. That's the population density of West New York, in New Jersey [6]. Manhattan and West New York are radically different places.
If we go the building-units route, consider that Manhattan gained 13,189 units between 2011 and 2014, i.e. 4,400 a year [1; Table 2]. To build the 500,000 to 600,000 bedrooms we need you'd need to make 415,000 to 500,000 units, i.e. a century of construction. (If you built only three bedrooms, you'd cut that time down to 167,000 to 200,000 units, i.e. a mere 38 to 45 years.) To build them in 20 years, you'd need to increase construction by 4.7 to 5.7x (90% to 2.3x if only 3BR), and that's ignoring any additional infrastructure that new population may need as well as population growth.
Cities are a product of density. If you try to make a city with suburban-sized personal spaces, you end up with neither city nor suburbia. Building up is better than sideways, always, but we shouldn't delude ourselves regarding realistic sets of trade-offs.
43% of the New York metro area is married, presumably many more are cohabiting. So, if we relax that constraint to "don't have to share a bedroom except with a romantic partner" then we are potentially already there.
Of course, the proportion of married couples could be much lower in Manhattan, and it's not necessarily the same 43%, but you get the idea.
More to the point I'm very interested what tradeoffs you think are worth literally never having the chance to be alone in a room. Without a shadow of a doubt I'd kill myself, and I'd never dream of brining a child into that miserable existence.
> if we relax that constraint to "don't have to share a bedroom except with a romantic partner" then we are potentially already there
50% of the Manhattan population lives alone, the same as the fraction that has never married [1]. So yes, what you outlined is approximately what's going on. (Just 12% of New Yorkers in rent-regulated apartments had more than 1 person per room; 4.4% more than 1.5 [2].)
The status quo isn't crowded per se. It's just crowded relative to suburbia. The point of my illustration was that small tweaks to density, e.g. one instead of one and a half bedrooms per person, quickly spiral at the scales and within the constraints of a city.
Right. People expect to skip straight from 22 or even 18 to a late-20s or early-30s level of "stuff" and general lifestyle, without paying their dues in the middle. It's called a "property ladder" for a reason.
It's less of a ladder than a Ponzi scheme. In SF housing prices have grown at a compound growth rate of 6% for over 50 years. Older generation squats on property paid for by debt, low taxes, and then retires at 60 -- all paid for by a younger generation that doesn't have jobs and can't afford housing.
Don't forget that Prop 13 disproportionately favors buyers who bought closer to when it was rolled out. Their rates were locked in a long time ago. I'm not sure how repeatable this will be for new buyers.
> In SF housing prices have grown at a compound growth rate of 6% for over 50 years.
When a good chunk of those years had interest rates in the 10%+ range, and when the years that were lower than 10% ended with "The Housing Bubble Pop" and "Great Recession", that 6% compounded growth is actually kinda awful.
In any case, compound growth is the center of most economies. Being the owner of things entitles you to profits, be it in stocks, bonds, or real estate.
The "buying on debt" depends on the rate that you got in at. If you're complaining that people in the 1970s were able to get 15% mortgages to earn lol 6% on Real Estate, then I don't think you fully appreciate the history of Stagflation and the 80s bond market.
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All in all, housing prices have rose because interest rates have fallen. More people can afford a house when mortgages are at 4% instead of at 15%, and the price of homes go up to compensate.
Housing is only a good financial investment if supply outstrips demand. The high cost of housing is less a function of low interest rates than zoning laws that restrict new development.
Yeah, go spend 3% of the loan amount to purchase a new 30-year loan, instead of paying off the house you already have... stay on debt perpetually.
Unless rates drop dramatically in a short-period of time (like in 2012), refinancing opportunities are rare. From the 1980s, you wouldn't have had a refinance opportunity until the mid 90s.
This is either some thinly veiled Millennial shaming or just pure ignorance. After you read the other replies to your comment, read this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13292046
That's true in my area. While there is plenty of construction, the land is too valuable for entry-level homes. If it's zoned for SFHs, the market will tolerate a 3000sqft+ mini-mansion with a high level of finish. If it's zoned for THs, they'll be 4 stories with an elevator. Condo development caters more to rich retirees than young professionals. The underground parking at the nearest high-rise is full of $100 cars.
What are the affordable parts of Long Island or Connecticut that are affordable and close to Manhattan? The parts of Connecticut that are suburbs close to NYC are known for being where the rich people live. [1]
> the areas you are touting as affordable have terrible public schools.
The K-12 school situation doesn't make them not affordable. It makes them less desirable, but cddotdotslash already pointed out that it's the desirable parts of the city that are unaffordable.
Sooner or later, society will have to realize that white/middle class flight is a direct cause of terrible public schools; and that by reversing the trend these schools will become less terrible.
By and large Manhattan public schools are nothing to write home about either. The same is true of someplace like Cambridge where the high school is ranked pretty far down in state rankings. Public schools in cities are mostly fairly poor by objective measurements, even when they serve very high cost neighborhoods.
I went to terrible public schools in a very poor neighborhood yet I came out just fine. I really think people put much too much emphasis on "good schools" as if they are magic, I think home environment matters much much more.
I think I know this area you are talking of. And if there is a house there for 240k then it is definitely not a decent neighborhood. There are areas of Queens which are very industrial and you can get a house for cheap, next to a superfund site.
If we bring manufacturing back to America, we can build more factories by cities and create more superfund sites, which will employ even MORE people (assuming the EPA isn't dissolved) AND create more affordable housing!
Right. It also seems like school districts in these high priced cities are either really, really good, or really, really bad. It is harder to find a "middle" of the road school district.
Exactly. There's also plenty of affordable housing stock in Chicago and LA, as long as you don't expect to live on the lake/ocean, don't expect a big suburban house, etc.
That's the thing about big cities, there's usually a huge variety of housing at all price points - with a variety of pros and cons for sure, but the lack of housing at a variety of prices is typically not an issue.
Amusing comment. Not quite that dire, but the most affordable SFRs do tend to be in neighborhoods that either have few amenities, or are right on the edge of (or in) neighborhoods where you don't want to lounge outside at night.
Otherwise, there is a glut of condos almost anywhere you look, if you're okay with living in a condo and paying HOA dues every month - which is the problem with condos, the HOA dues can easily take something affordable and push it to the edge of affordability or beyond.
I've been looking recently, speaking from current experience.
That's entirely untrue - you can find plenty of decent affordable neighborhoods in LA that have nothing in common with skid row. What you have to compromise on is traffic/long commute.
Neighborhoods in LA vary greatly and depend on what you value. For example, if you want good schools, yard and say house under 700k, and want to commute to Santa Monica. Your best bet is West San Fernando Valley, such as Woodland Hills and parts of Calabasas.
Thousand Oaks would reduce house costs to 400-600k, but add 20-30 mins to an already hour-long drive. Forget public transit.
If you don't need to go to SM/Venice/West LA, then going south might be better. Orange County has a lot to offer and probably a bit cheaper.
If you are ok with Condos/Townhomes, either direction, 2-3 br condo can be had for less than 400k, sometimes less than 300k.
Most condos on the west side are more like 600-900k and above, so the drive can save you 50%, but it really sucks. (Did the drive for 6 years.)
Hmm, a few of these are not even in the same county, 700k too rich. Middle-class is more like 300k. Most choices around say, 300k are around Downtown or South Central and have bars on the windows, which is what I was slightly exaggerating by calling them "near skid-row." I'm guessing nearby schools are in similar condition.
Greater LA area covers at least 3 counties. How's that a problem?
If you want sub 300k in a safe area with shorter commute, then you have to stick to condos. If you have to have a house, commute is required. Valencia, Santa Clarita, Sylmar, all have houses in $300k or less.
Homeless explosion has as much to do with inadequate mental health care as any economic situation. Homelessness is such a complex topic that no comment on a thread could ever do it justice. Try talking a chronically homeless person into accepting a free apartment - you'd be surprised at the answer and concerns.
There's no reason to disbelieve him when you can disbelieve the price. It's probably some agent pricing the listing below the seller's floor with the hope of generating lots of interest and a bidding war.
Listing prices are pretty useless. Better to look at the prices homes actually sell for.
I've lived in Queens for 25 years. A house is minimum 400k, more often 500k in the towns furthest from Manhattan (Floral Park, Douglaston, Far Rockaway). Anything closer is 600-1 mil.
Living in the nice part of big cities is a positional good. It's going to get more expensive as society gets more expensive, because you are trying to buy your way on top of a ladder.
Fort Hill, the neighborhood the article starts with and returns to repeatedly, is a lot more like Queens than like Chelsea -- and that's where people are getting priced out of now in Boston.
In L.A. there is no place with housing at that price, even dangerous neighborhoods with horrible schools. Even the "good" neighborhoods have pretty bad schools.
