Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time • Hacker News Board

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#931

Post by Grazester » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

purplepatrick wrote: post #928

derekdahmer wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you. In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from (edit: downtown) Manhattan and you'd really have to go out…

I’ve lived in nyc for 20+ years, moving from a country that is “hundreds of times safer”. I’ve never felt unsafe. As others remarked correctly, aggregated numbers are useless and not representative for the avg person. If you truncate NYC’s crime numbers by stripping out high crime areas such as Brownsville or the South Bronx, crime here is shockingly low. Even more so if you correct for crime that would be er affect…

Brownsville is still dangerous? For some reason I thought they were calming down there and East New York was the dodgy place now in Brooklyn. And Yeah Harlem seems to be on the up and up.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#932

Post by pandaman » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:20 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #656

irrational wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had similar thoughts. I live on the west coast and feel so safe that I don't even lock the front door to my house, ever. I wonder if OP feels safe enough to always have their front door unlocked.

I wonder how much people think the typical flimsy locks on a residential door will actual stop someone who goes up to the door with the intention of entering. It would almost require someone to want to enter but iff the door was unlocked, which seems like a poor strategy for a burglar.

Locks won't stop somebody who wants to get inside no matter what. They will stop somebody who would not mind casing the house, waiting till it's empty, entering without attracting any attention and walking out with loot, which is a "safer" crime than knocking down the door or breaking a window. Breaking and entering is a crime by itself, carries minimum sentence in some jurisdictions. As I understand it's because it's hard to convict somebody who walked in, took stuff and sold it for anything other than trespassing. How do you prove they stole the missing items unless you catch them in the act or have video surveillance inside?

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#933

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:44 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #708

rayiner wrote: post #362

I wonder how much of contemporary Democratic politics is driven by insane rents in NYC and SF. The party has seen an influx of core Reagan voters—everyone from Wall Street bankers to Silicon Valley engineers (Reagan won Santa Clara County by 17 points in 1984). These affluent, highly educated folks have adopted the narratives and politics of the working class, juxtaposed against a ever-more-narrowly-defined “elite.”…

This comment nicely attempts to paint high earning (not necessarily wealthy) upper middle class professionals as the scapegoat for an issue they did not create. The reality is, the people who are actually wealthy (think deca millionaires on up through billionaires) and investment firms and corporations are the ones suppressing supply for individual home owners. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-est…

The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars ... is about a billion dollars.

The upper extremes of wealth are truly mind-boggling.

And for a family with a few million in nonliquid assets --- housing which they require to live, and investments earmarked for retirement --- a million-dollar cushion at the end of working life is not much.

(The fact that many people reach retirement with far less is not only a tragedy but a looming national catastrophe for the US.)

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#934

Post by zjaffee » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:45 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #677

ctvo wrote: post #390

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along…

Just to provide a 3rd party reaction here: it sounds like you've circularly reasoned yourself into a trap of your own making. You don't want to live anywhere else because you like NYC . Because no other city is exactly like NYC, you aren't interested in living anywhere else. The reason it's "circular" is because there are cities with good transit, good arts, great food, have a tech scene, and even have financial dist…

It's a weird metric to say that late night nightlife is critical for being a global city, instead of say, huge percentages of the population coming from foreign countries. Airport access for direct flights, ect.

Miami also meets every single one of these metrics and has later night life than NYC. New Orleans has 24 hr night life. Vegas too.

Los Angeles has a higher foreign born population than NYC.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#935

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #900

bradlys wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in SF? It sounds like you don’t live in SF.

You don’t have to live in SF to observe that living in SF is a choice. Many of my law school cohort has household incomes of $300k to $1 million. Many choose to live in MYC or SF or DC and pay nearly $2 million for a house. My wife and I instead chose to buy a sub-$500k house in an exurb. We eat at Maggianos instead of Per Se, but we can afford “rich people” luxuries like a house on the water, sending our kids to pri…

The choice is tightly bundled with economic opportunity, income, specific jobs, school quality, and other factors.

I'm interpreting "living in SF" to mean broadly within the SF Bay Area metro region, which would include much of the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa. Arguably parts of Marin and Santa Cruz. For some of the longer commutes, Sonoma, Solano, Yolo, Sacramento, and San Joaquin.

Housing is scarce and expensive throughout the region. It's one of few economic hubs in the US let alone the state. And people have increasingly been priced out, or simply unable to find housing (including replacement after natural disasters).

"Choice" isn't a binary, or absent profound implications, opportunities, and/or consequences.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#936

Post by zjaffee » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:50 AM UTC

mushufasa wrote: post #450

ctvo wrote: post #390

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along…

Having grown up in DC and New York, I would say more strongly that there's no other city in the USA that has comparable mass transit. The way I would put it is -- in New York, it is more of a hassle to have a car than to go without. In all those other cities, while there is some mass transit, you will find yourself wanting a car.

I grew up in NYC and I think it has a lot of problems that have prevented me from moving back there since college, this said...

NYC has the largest train system in the entire world, especially when you combine the various nearby train systems that aren't a part of the main subway like LIRR, NJ transit, path and Metro north (in China which technically is longer they count long distance commuter rail). The subway alone has more stops than any train system in the world.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#937

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

popularrecluse wrote: post #310

peanuty1 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be such a bad thing if those artists move to, say, St. Louis and create the next big thriving art hub there?

Artists tend towards progressive locales.

See, for example, Marfa, TX.

Artists seek low costs.

They tend to create progressive locales.

Then the gentrification cycle sets in.

I'm not saying all low-rent regions will attract art, but it's possible to generate some pretty significant cultural shifts.

San Francisco / Berkeley becoming capitals of counterculture was not an entirely obvious outcome from the perspective of the 1930s, 40s, or 50s. A friend recalls the Haight-Ashbury when it was largely a Greek ethnic neighbourhood.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#938

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 3:58 AM UTC

fritztastic wrote: post #739

kristjansson wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100x is shocking, so I explored a bit. Over 2010-2020 Amherst PD reported ~5 violent crimes per year[1], in a town of ~10000, or about 50 per 100000. NYPD reported ~49k per year over the same period[ibid], on about 8.3m residents, or about about 590 per 100000. So about 11x difference in per-capita reported-to-local-PD crime. I'll admit I'm surprised it's still an order of magnitude, I share GP's sensibility that the…

NYC gets dozens of millions of visitors annually, in addition to people commuting in daily and people transiting through the city. So, while the number of crimes is high, the number of people actually in the city at any given time is multiple times the number of people who reside there. Probably the total number of people in the city anually is 10x the people who live there. I'd also factor in the numbers are higher…

> Probably the total number of people in the city anually is 10x the people who live there.

That number doesn't really matter, does it? I'd think the average number of people there each day is much closer to the relevant number.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#939

Post by harryh » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:00 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #929

harryh wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Waldman has a great blog post on this topic that goes beyond big city rents (though I agree that's a huge issue): https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7263.html

That’s an excellent post. One thing I hadn’t thought about is that communities are so stratified that if you fall even a little bit income wise, you lose your work community, might have to move, might need to change your kid’s school, etc.

Yup. Which goes back to the housing problem. Under building of housing country wide (and even more so in major cities) is IMHO one of the root causes of many many many of the problems we see in America today.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#940

Post by zjaffee » Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #423

inglor_cz wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really like mass transit and want to live without a car, America is probably not for you. USA got rid of most streetcar systems a long time ago and rebuilding them from scratch in current NIMBY climate is basically impossible. And subways, which are much more expensive than ground transit, only make economic sense in several metropolises. Try some European city with reasonable rents like Warsaw. Even the skysc…

There’s no fundamental reason “America is probably not for” people who want high-quality, dense urbanism. The rent in NYC is a clear sign that there’s demand for it.

That's not true, there's demand to live in a specific part of NYC. I really cannot stand that urbanists say this sort of thing. Demand isn't just for walkablity, it's for the complete new urbanist neighborhood that was first formalized by the likes of Jane Jacobs and friends. It's about the unique one of a kind shops, access to really unique amenities that only exist in the city and so on.

There are plenty of walkable parts of NYC like the South Bronx that have far lower demand to live there than the suburbs in nearby NJ or hell the not so walkable parts of NYC like Staten island, south Bronx or the outer parts of Queens.

What people want is access to amenities in under 10 minutes of travel time, and under 20 minutes of travel to special events they don't go to regularly, as well as a short job commute. This can easily be solved by getting rid of euclidean zoning in suburbs and building out all American suburbs in the style of cities like Portland originally had been.