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The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

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Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#31
The middle class can afford to live in cities, just not in a 3500 sqft house with a 2 car garage and a boat, and with the best school district and certainly not in NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc.

There are plenty of places to live in America. You have to adjust your standard of living and your expectations according to your income and desires.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of smaller cities is, they are more affordable. Those professions will have a better time of it than in a larger city.

But what happens when very few of those professionals can afford to live in the big ones?

The price goes up for folks living there? And then plumbers can afford to live there. Its good old supply-and-demand freemarket principles at work.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#33

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…

> 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. T…

> terrible public schools

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.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#34
post #5

Strange, I'm middle class and I live in a city. There are other cities than NYC, SF, LA and Boston.

Every time I read these threads and nobody mentions Chicago, I smile a bit knowing that my rent isn't going to go up $100/mo for no reason.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#35
post #31

The middle class can afford to live in cities, just not in a 3500 sqft house with a 2 car garage and a boat, and with the best school district and certainly not in NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc. There are plenty of places to live in America. You have to adjust your standard of living and your expectations according to your income and desires.

If you're going to make a statement like that I'm going to need an example of what you consider middle class, what you consider affordable and what a reasonable square footage is for a family of 4.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#36
post #21

This article mentions "hot cities" including Austin, which not too long ago was just another small eclectic city with steady growth. Once it grew large enough and provided the ingredients to hold it's own, industry wise, against other "hot cities" it became what it is today. Austin was just a little weird city in Texas when I grew up in Dallas, but now it's up there with the big boys. What this tells me is there are…

I hope are right in that other cities become more competitive. More companies will need to take the plunge and move to the more affordable cities.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#37
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, many jobs may be in urban areas but aren't actually in cities/urban cores. In fact, the movement of many professional jobs into cities is a relatively recent phenomenon. And while Silicon Valley and the greater NYC area are something of exceptions, you get out of the urban cores of somewhere like Boston/Cambridge and housing prices go down fairly quickly except for some particularly upscale towns.

Somerville is expensive as hell , despite the fact that it used to be known as "Slumerville" and the housing stock hasn't improved one bit.

I think they're counting Somerville and similar locales as part of the urban core. By that metric though places like Mattapan should also be part of the urban core and are a lot more affordable.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#38
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, many jobs may be in urban areas but aren't actually in cities/urban cores. In fact, the movement of many professional jobs into cities is a relatively recent phenomenon. And while Silicon Valley and the greater NYC area are something of exceptions, you get out of the urban cores of somewhere like Boston/Cambridge and housing prices go down fairly quickly except for some particularly upscale towns.

Somerville is expensive as hell , despite the fact that it used to be known as "Slumerville" and the housing stock hasn't improved one bit.

Well, I certainly consider Somerville part of the urban cores of Boston being on the T (sort of) etc. And it's expensive as a result. But get out beyond 128 and, with the exception of some specific communities like Concord, housing prices drop considerably.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#39

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…

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.

Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore

#40
post #31

The middle class can afford to live in cities, just not in a 3500 sqft house with a 2 car garage and a boat, and with the best school district and certainly not in NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc. There are plenty of places to live in America. You have to adjust your standard of living and your expectations according to your income and desires.

If you're going to make a statement like that I'm going to need an example of what you consider middle class, what you consider affordable and what a reasonable square footage is for a family of 4.

Middle class in a small to mid size city is $200k in annual household income. A family of three should have no problem in 1200sqft. Two kids is excessive, but if you do have two kids you'd be fine in 1500sqft.
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