161–170 of 391 posts
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A large percentage of the population relies on school for childcare. No childcare = no work = no money. A large percentage of those families didn’t have elderly in the home or visiting. For them, in-person school was critical.
...and hence why we helped those people who were unemployed and had children.
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> It’s still great. I’ve been to NYC many times and have friends in their late 30s that live there. The ones that live there say the same (“it’s great”) but never elaborate. From the outside, it honestly looks like a dirty, difficult, chaotic city. Many restaurants, but all seem to be copy+paste coffee shop, Italian, etc or very low quality cafe/deli. Coming from the Midwest, it feels very old, dirty and poor yet som…
Dirty and poor compared to what?
People I know from the East Coast that have visited are typically floored by the quality of life in flyover country. Everything we have is new, life is affordable, top performing schools and communities are growing. The local governments are generally growth oriented with excellent infrastructure and relatively Low taxes.
Oh, but maybe not as many Thai/niche ethnic restaurants, so there is that downside, ha. But beyond your 20s, why anyone would consider calling NYC home is beyond me. Quality of life for my family > proximity to restaurants and bands.
Keep in mind, crime has risen for each of three years through 2022, and while that trend is worrisome, the actual number of crimes is only back up to 2006 levels. https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/crime-statistics/histori... That's not a year known as "the bad old days" or particularly dangerous, though you can certainly write the alarming headline, "highest crime in 16 years." (FWIW indications are the trend reversed this year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-06/nyc-crime...)
The population decline coincides with the pandemic and remote work, and from my own personal experience here that's a much bigger driver of people leaving. Many people fled to their vacation homes and never came back, other people bought new places upstate and moved.
Like all cities, but probably more than most, NYC is at an inflection point where it's figuring out what its future looks like as work habits change. The offices won't all fill back up but aren't easily converted to housing. And frankly NYC's industries, though dynamic and high end, continue to face tech disruption, and Silicon Valley only has more economic strength every year.
So there could be even more population loss. Rents seem to be softening. There could absolutely be a down period here, economically and otherwise. But if you look back at the history of the city, these have been the most fertile times culturally. Crime in the 70s and 80s went hand in hand with punk rock in LES, art scene in SoHo, independent film wave, birth of hip hop. There were some actual businesses that came out of all that. I don't want NYC to become that bad again, it's not good for the people who live here, but if there is a lull as the city figures out what it is, there will be a silver lining.
I think it is far likely composition effects from: - High-income people who work remote or hybrid started demanding more space for work and living. Given NYC housing is basically fixed (there is almost no building), this trend has decreased the average number of people per housing unit. - As the article notes, "the city’s populace is overall older and wealthier": wealthier people use more housing per person and tend to have fewer children.
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covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity.
I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. A few months of shutdown was reasonable, but shutting schools down for a couple years is too big of a price to pay. Also, my kids were in daycare the whole time outside of Mar to May 2020, and they were spreading all sorts of viruses just like they were before COVID. How the government chose to allow the most prolific spreaders to congregate…
More taxes. Less service. Everything is outrageously expensive. Middle class gets crushed. If you've wealthy, no point in having your main residence in NYC (see, more taxes). Will get worse before it gets better.
If voters like expensive housing, I guess we'll keep getting expensive housing.
I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a city of millions. Sure you can pay more and get something. But it used to be that you traded a lot of quality of life (in unit washer dryer, dishwasher, ac, no walkups, cars, space, etc) for a lower price and the s…
When people (including myself) talk about New York not being fun any more, it's almost always in relation to the price. Rent is incredibly expensive at this point, and that drives up the price of literally everything else, too. New Yorkers also don't understand that the "tier 2" cities in the US actually have most/all of the food, culture, and activities that they think are exclusive to New York. On the other hand, l…
I'm not knocking tier 2 cities or advocating NY, but that's just not true. Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world.
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covid spread through kids like wildfire, often via asymptomatic infections which then spread to, and killed, elderly who just wanted to see their grandkids. The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity.
> The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives and prevent disability through long covid absolutely staggers the mind and erodes my faith in humanity. Or you could reasonably conclude that the policies enacted during COVID are yet another example of how we prioritize the elderly over children in the United States, arguably because children don't vote and the elderly do.…
I'm not sure how you reconcile your claim that you don't believe there's a clear answer to whether it was wright with the emotion-laden and leading statement you made just before.
Everyone suffered during the pandemic. There was no way to spare anyone, it was a traumatic experience for everyone. Having a dead grandmother and grandfather would be much more impactful on their life than the school they missed.
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>I live in NYC. The problem is that there’s literally 0 housing. That’s it. >Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a cities of millions. I'm currently in my mid-30's. Throughout all of my 20's, I thought it would be a blast to live in NYC. Then I had a good stretch where I visited it a whole bunch of times, hanging out with fri…
I moved here about 10 years ago in my mid 20s. It's certainly more expensive and annoying to find housing here than other places I've lived, but it's more than balanced out by needing to own an automobile. The average cost of car ownership in the US is in the $10k-12k range. I certainly don't spent an extra thousand dollars on rent here vs say, any other place I might reasonably move. So I figure I'm still coming out…
My (now) wife & I both got well paying jobs at banks out of college almost 20 years ago. Our entire signing bonuses went to apartment fees & deposits. We were each in a situation where 1 paycheck per month went to the rent. Neither of us had a dishwasher, let alone a washer/dryer, central air, any aircon.. etc. Our buildings had bugs&rats, and walls thin enough to hear neighbors phone calls.
Marrying and moving up to nicer places, we still had no washer/dryer across the next 2 apartments.
Finally when we felt like we had "made it" in our mid-30s, we bought a new condo and finally have a washer/dryer. It cost more than my parents, in-laws, and sister's homes combined.. and then multiplied by two. It has only 2 beds (not 3 like the aforementioned homes). My kitchen has a stove the size of a fisher price play kit, and the oven doesn't fit standard sized baking trays. I have only 1 zone AC which can't manage to keep the different rooms within +/-5F of each other.
I could live like a proverbial king in 95% of the rest of the country on this budget.
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> I have no problem with sacrificing the elderly for the benefit of the kids. Read what you just wrote and ponder on it for a bit.
I have pondered about it for over a decade. Our societies drastically prioritize the elderly over the young. They are the ones with political power, after all. Here’s an easy example: why does the US pay doctors more via Medicare (for people over 65) than via Medicaid (for poorer people, including kids).