Not necessarily disagreeing with you. But the practical meaning of that is that, in the case of New York, this means the entire island of Manhattan becomes a playground for the wealthy and the people who keep that playground humming are relegated to the outer boroughs.
Most of the people that currently live in rent controlled or price stabilized apartments got them decades ago. The waiting list for any units that become available is extremely long.
That effectively means most rent control is helping the elderly. I present that without comment or judgement, it's just a fact. The elderly are generally not the people manning the counter at your local bodega. They are not your local construction workers, doormen, or bartenders.
All of those people, the ones that are the backbone of the service economy within Manhattan, already live in the outer boroughs.
So the question effectively becomes does it make sense to subsidize the rent of retired people in Manhattan? On one side you can be the assholes kicking elderly people out of the homes and neighborhoods they have lived in for 30 years. On the other side you can be the assholes forcing the working class to commute 90 minutes a day. Take your pick of the bad options.
Very interesting. According to this: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/HVS_Rent_Stabiliz..., in Manhattan below 96th street 35% of rent-stabilized apartment dwellers moved in more than 20 years ago! (Versus 2.7% of those in non-stabilized apartments).
Another interesting fact from that paper: the median person in a rent-stabilized apartment in core Manhattan has a higher income than the median person in a non-stabilized apartment in most of the rest of NYC.
This is a slightly different PDF from the same research group [1], which is what I was looking at. A couple other statistics that stick out.
There are more rent stabilized apartments in NYC than market rate apartments. Over 20% of all rent stablized apartments in Manhattan go to people over 65. Less than 5% of people in market rate apartments are over 65 years old.Over 65% of people in a rent stabilized apartment in Manhattan are white.
I think people have a picture of rent stabilized apartments as the place where your local bodega employee lives. The fact is the neighborhood rent stabilized apartments are where retired people live.
I don't know how prevalent this is but from my experience, rent stabilization is largely gamed by many landlords.
My lease in Manhattan is for about 60% higher than what we are paying. We are then given a "preferential rent" rider which allows us to pay what we pay... This I assume is so the landlord keeps the building at his rent stabilization maximum which are about $3k higher than market rate. This is probably happening everywhere (at least in my last 3 apis) and it really amounts to no stabilization at all...
Living in Manhattan is not a right. I don't see anything wrong with a shorter commute being more expensive.
I would very happily pay more for services that get more expensive because workers demand higher wages for their longer commutes (etc.), in exchange for the drop in market-rate rent (which I pay) that would come from throwing out rent regulation.
That's kind of the entire point. The wealthy who use Manhattan as their playground today are just getting the public to subsidize housing for the people who keep their playground humming.
Manhattan is already far too expensive; I have a friend who commutes daily to Manhattan from Philadelphia because rents are 25% of what they are in Manhattan. It's only 90 minutes to Penn Station on the train, which is about the same time it would take from the affordable parts of Brooklyn or Queens.
Except a ride from Brooklyn or Queens is $2.75 and a ride from Philadelphia is around $80 on Amtrak. Also, you're assuming that he lives directly above 30th Street Station and works directly above Penn Station, otherwise the travel time is likely to be over 2 hours.
I complain to my friend in brooklyn it takes about as long to go from Philadelphia to Penn Station as it does from Penn Station to their door step. However yeah, those tickets can get pricey. Sometimes you luck out and get the 50$ one, but many times its 200 one way - I dont know what tickets would be commuting during the early hours to get to work though.
That being said, you are also right about living directly above Penn Station. I can get really far in 20 - 30 minutes in philadelphia, but almost nowhere in NYC because of human congestion.
not that 1.5 - 2 hour commutes leave much for a life. I did that for 2 years and while I got a lot of reading done, I didnt have any time at home. You get home 7-7:30 and make dinner. maybe you are finished eating and chores by 9 and you go to sleep between 10 and 11 (you aren't staying up very late because you are leaving early in the morning hours too).
You can drive from Philly to Trenton or a similar station (takes ~30 minutes from NE Philly), then spend ~1 hr on NJ Transit. This makes the trip cost $15.50+gas, or $440 monthly.
i dont own a car. if owning a car was part of my every day life perhaps, but otherwise I'd have to factor in the price and costs of the car which are extreme
also the hour and a half is optimistic, parking walking overhead waiting for the train would probably again push time up
I mean, it practically is. I live in Manhattan, and with the exception of a very few places (basically UES right on the river and then the projects) any studio apartment south of 100th (~115th on the west side) street is going to be $2000/month or more. If you find any place cheaper it is going to be borderline uninhabitable or a 6th floor walkup. Rents in Harlem are going up now, too.
What do you mean? Do you mean the coops that have a max income? Because those obviously don't count, they can't rent out a studio for $2k when the resident isn't allowed to make more than 75k. Or do you mean applications that make you sign away your first born and tell them your deepest darkest secrets? Because everyone I know has had to do that, it's just part of the process, mainly because of how hard it is to evict someone in NYC, and doesn't mean you get cheaper rent.
I mean that some coöp applications do have you sign away your first born and tell them your deepest darkest secrets and that there are still enough people who haven't gone through that process at one point or another that the market rent for those units is slightly lower than it would be otherwise. Of course, I only have anecdata support my claim.
I can imagine that areas like this already exist, e.g. in most lower Manhattan and upper west side. Did it result in anything particularly bad, or at least measurably bad?
(Disclaimer: I live in Brooklyn and work on Manhattan; my commute is still better than in most other places I lived.)
Did it result in anything particularly bad, or at least measurably bad?
I imagine that depends on the timescale you're looking at. A similar thing has happened in London over the past 30 years - the upshot is that schools and hospitals are now finding it practically impossible to recruit teachers and nurses in the city because they can't afford to live within a commutable distance. That's quite bad.
are now finding it practically impossible to recruit teachers and nurses in the city because they can't afford to live within a commutable distance. That's quite bad.
Then they will pay more, all the extra money will go to rent, and things will stabilize again.
Do Hospitals located in expensive places receive extra reimbursement from the government?
Eventually, yeah. There is a finite supply of land on Manhattan, and demand from foreign buyers is growing. Downtown and midtown are already saturated, so the billion dollar condo buildings of 2040 will need to be built somewhere.
I hear this often, but it doesn't jive with my impressions of Manhattan (lived there years ago, visit periodically). In particular, significant parts of the island top out at walk-up heights (5-6 stories). The economics of rent in Manhattan would change dramatically if the island were rebuilt using modern technologies (chiefly: elevators and the taller buildings they enable).
Without knowing the local politics, it seems obvious that there is some force that is preventing the low-productivity uses of land (broadly: "short buildings") from being converted into higher-productivity uses (chiefly "taller buildings"). There's only a finite supply of ground -- this does not mean there has to be a finite supply of usable indoor space. The latter is a choice that can presumably be changed when the will arises.
You can't just tear down some 4-story building and put up sky scrappers. There is a maximum density capacity that a lot of Manhattan already exceeds. The trains, sewers and electrical requirements need to be thought of too. Especially the trains which are already way over capacity.
Look at what has happened in Williamsburg and the L-train. As more and more warehouses have been converted into apartments and new condo's have gone up, the L-train has become awful for large parts of the day. And the train runs as often as possible during those times.
I'm not saying you can't do these things but I do think other things need to be considered.
I don't see any particular reason that Inwood will be more desirable in 2040 than Brooklyn Heights. Being physically on the island of Manhattan just isn't that big a deal. What matters in the long run seems to be commuting time and to a lesser extent zoning and projects.
Comments
Not necessarily disagreeing with you. But the practical meaning of that is that, in the case of New York, this means the entire island of Manhattan becomes a playground for the wealthy and the people who keep that playground humming are relegated to the outer boroughs.
That has already happened.
Most of the people that currently live in rent controlled or price stabilized apartments got them decades ago. The waiting list for any units that become available is extremely long.
That effectively means most rent control is helping the elderly. I present that without comment or judgement, it's just a fact. The elderly are generally not the people manning the counter at your local bodega. They are not your local construction workers, doormen, or bartenders.
All of those people, the ones that are the backbone of the service economy within Manhattan, already live in the outer boroughs.
So the question effectively becomes does it make sense to subsidize the rent of retired people in Manhattan? On one side you can be the assholes kicking elderly people out of the homes and neighborhoods they have lived in for 30 years. On the other side you can be the assholes forcing the working class to commute 90 minutes a day. Take your pick of the bad options.
Very interesting. According to this: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/HVS_Rent_Stabiliz..., in Manhattan below 96th street 35% of rent-stabilized apartment dwellers moved in more than 20 years ago! (Versus 2.7% of those in non-stabilized apartments).
Another interesting fact from that paper: the median person in a rent-stabilized apartment in core Manhattan has a higher income than the median person in a non-stabilized apartment in most of the rest of NYC.
This is a slightly different PDF from the same research group [1], which is what I was looking at. A couple other statistics that stick out.
There are more rent stabilized apartments in NYC than market rate apartments. Over 20% of all rent stablized apartments in Manhattan go to people over 65. Less than 5% of people in market rate apartments are over 65 years old.Over 65% of people in a rent stabilized apartment in Manhattan are white.
I think people have a picture of rent stabilized apartments as the place where your local bodega employee lives. The fact is the neighborhood rent stabilized apartments are where retired people live.
[1] http://furmancenter.org/files/FurmanCenter_FactBrief_RentSta....
I don't know how prevalent this is but from my experience, rent stabilization is largely gamed by many landlords.
My lease in Manhattan is for about 60% higher than what we are paying. We are then given a "preferential rent" rider which allows us to pay what we pay... This I assume is so the landlord keeps the building at his rent stabilization maximum which are about $3k higher than market rate. This is probably happening everywhere (at least in my last 3 apis) and it really amounts to no stabilization at all...
Living in Manhattan is not a right. I don't see anything wrong with a shorter commute being more expensive.
I would very happily pay more for services that get more expensive because workers demand higher wages for their longer commutes (etc.), in exchange for the drop in market-rate rent (which I pay) that would come from throwing out rent regulation.
That's kind of the entire point. The wealthy who use Manhattan as their playground today are just getting the public to subsidize housing for the people who keep their playground humming.
Manhattan is already far too expensive; I have a friend who commutes daily to Manhattan from Philadelphia because rents are 25% of what they are in Manhattan. It's only 90 minutes to Penn Station on the train, which is about the same time it would take from the affordable parts of Brooklyn or Queens.
Except a ride from Brooklyn or Queens is $2.75 and a ride from Philadelphia is around $80 on Amtrak. Also, you're assuming that he lives directly above 30th Street Station and works directly above Penn Station, otherwise the travel time is likely to be over 2 hours.
I complain to my friend in brooklyn it takes about as long to go from Philadelphia to Penn Station as it does from Penn Station to their door step. However yeah, those tickets can get pricey. Sometimes you luck out and get the 50$ one, but many times its 200 one way - I dont know what tickets would be commuting during the early hours to get to work though.
That being said, you are also right about living directly above Penn Station. I can get really far in 20 - 30 minutes in philadelphia, but almost nowhere in NYC because of human congestion.
not that 1.5 - 2 hour commutes leave much for a life. I did that for 2 years and while I got a lot of reading done, I didnt have any time at home. You get home 7-7:30 and make dinner. maybe you are finished eating and chores by 9 and you go to sleep between 10 and 11 (you aren't staying up very late because you are leaving early in the morning hours too).
Who commutes via Amtrak?
You can drive from Philly to Trenton or a similar station (takes ~30 minutes from NE Philly), then spend ~1 hr on NJ Transit. This makes the trip cost $15.50+gas, or $440 monthly.
i dont own a car. if owning a car was part of my every day life perhaps, but otherwise I'd have to factor in the price and costs of the car which are extreme
also the hour and a half is optimistic, parking walking overhead waiting for the train would probably again push time up
I mean, it practically is. I live in Manhattan, and with the exception of a very few places (basically UES right on the river and then the projects) any studio apartment south of 100th (~115th on the west side) street is going to be $2000/month or more. If you find any place cheaper it is going to be borderline uninhabitable or a 6th floor walkup. Rents in Harlem are going up now, too.
Of course, there are more exceptions. Intimidating coöp applications are one.
What do you mean? Do you mean the coops that have a max income? Because those obviously don't count, they can't rent out a studio for $2k when the resident isn't allowed to make more than 75k. Or do you mean applications that make you sign away your first born and tell them your deepest darkest secrets? Because everyone I know has had to do that, it's just part of the process, mainly because of how hard it is to evict someone in NYC, and doesn't mean you get cheaper rent.
I mean that some coöp applications do have you sign away your first born and tell them your deepest darkest secrets and that there are still enough people who haven't gone through that process at one point or another that the market rent for those units is slightly lower than it would be otherwise. Of course, I only have anecdata support my claim.
Entire Manhattan, including 200th streets?
I can imagine that areas like this already exist, e.g. in most lower Manhattan and upper west side. Did it result in anything particularly bad, or at least measurably bad?
(Disclaimer: I live in Brooklyn and work on Manhattan; my commute is still better than in most other places I lived.)
Did it result in anything particularly bad, or at least measurably bad?
I imagine that depends on the timescale you're looking at. A similar thing has happened in London over the past 30 years - the upshot is that schools and hospitals are now finding it practically impossible to recruit teachers and nurses in the city because they can't afford to live within a commutable distance. That's quite bad.
Then they will pay more, all the extra money will go to rent, and things will stabilize again.
Do Hospitals located in expensive places receive extra reimbursement from the government?
Eventually, yeah. There is a finite supply of land on Manhattan, and demand from foreign buyers is growing. Downtown and midtown are already saturated, so the billion dollar condo buildings of 2040 will need to be built somewhere.
I hear this often, but it doesn't jive with my impressions of Manhattan (lived there years ago, visit periodically). In particular, significant parts of the island top out at walk-up heights (5-6 stories). The economics of rent in Manhattan would change dramatically if the island were rebuilt using modern technologies (chiefly: elevators and the taller buildings they enable).
Without knowing the local politics, it seems obvious that there is some force that is preventing the low-productivity uses of land (broadly: "short buildings") from being converted into higher-productivity uses (chiefly "taller buildings"). There's only a finite supply of ground -- this does not mean there has to be a finite supply of usable indoor space. The latter is a choice that can presumably be changed when the will arises.
You can't just tear down some 4-story building and put up sky scrappers. There is a maximum density capacity that a lot of Manhattan already exceeds. The trains, sewers and electrical requirements need to be thought of too. Especially the trains which are already way over capacity.
Look at what has happened in Williamsburg and the L-train. As more and more warehouses have been converted into apartments and new condo's have gone up, the L-train has become awful for large parts of the day. And the train runs as often as possible during those times.
I'm not saying you can't do these things but I do think other things need to be considered.
Historically it was partly because the later-developed parts of the city were built on less viable land (i.e. swamp/landfill)
I don't see any particular reason that Inwood will be more desirable in 2040 than Brooklyn Heights. Being physically on the island of Manhattan just isn't that big a deal. What matters in the long run seems to be commuting time and to a lesser extent zoning and projects.
Looking at this heat map: http://project.wnyc.org/transit-time/#40.75805,-73.98571,12,...
I'd be bullish on Sunnyside / western Woodside.