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.
The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
31–40 of 363 posts
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#32Earlier 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?
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#33This 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…
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
#34Strange, I'm middle class and I live in a city. There are other cities than NYC, SF, LA and Boston.
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#35The 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
#36This 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…
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#37Earlier 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.
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#38Earlier 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.
Re: The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
#39This 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…
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
#40The 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.