rusty - the city ended rent subsidies - that's why there are more homeless people. I think bloomberg should also ship them off to minneapolis the first few days in september - I hear there's going to be a convention for people who like to yell "get a job" at battered single moms with young children and mentally ill drug addicts. because that's what they need to hear to turn their lives around.
"Young Americans are spending less of their money on cars, as Jordan Weissmann explained, as they get driver's licences at lower rates and spend more of their money on, say, high-tech smart phones.
Amazingly, Americans still manage to suck up far, far more energy per person than do the people in those Western European nations with so many more cars per capita. Our oil usage per capita is about twice what it is in Western Europe..."
Despite Europe's recent financial woes, Europe has become absurdly wealthy in the last 20 years.
Germany's GDP has seen like 60% growth since 1992 and 1700% growth since 1970. Not to mention, you can easily rent a 1-2 bedroom apartment in Berlin for less than 700 euros a month and closer to 400 euros a month if you feel like "slumming" it. Combine access of cheap rent and cheap medicine with low vehicle miles traveled and you have a recipe for a money-rich middle-class who can afford to spend conspicuously.
Unlike Europe, the United States can't afford to not use automobile— travel by automobile is a non-negotiable in most of the U.S.
The fact that automobile ownership is going down is actually quite troubling.
"rusty - the city ended rent subsidies - that's why there are more homeless people. "
it's amazing how many people are just holding on by a thread. Almost 50K homeless in NYC! Damn. It's become very noticeable when you walk down the street as well.
1br's go for $1200 in Bronx. Single moms that make $9 working at Starbucks are finding themselves out on the street. I was gonna take over a friend's lease in Brooklyn. $1500 for a cute 1br. Landlord blocked lease transfer and hiked the rent to $2300. Same place went for about $700 a decade ago.
This will be Bloomberg's most lasting legacy. Laissez faire shitfest that resembles a batman movie.
So cars. Yeah. Fuck cars. Cars are such a money pit to begin with. Like James points out, it's a shame that in most parts of the country you are subhuman without one.
This is the price we pay for a sterile city. Cities went from necessity to novelty. Growing up in NY in the 80's and 90's was amazing. It was a real city filled with real people, and with that comes a certain level of grit. Now NY is a cartoon version of itself, where people can experiance the city without any of the dangers of a city. It is now like a theme vacation filled with permanent tourists. The "wildness" and chaos of the "urban jungle" has been stripped away and replaced with something that soft rich hipsters can handle, a sort of "jungle resort". As a result the adventure of the city experiance goes away, prices go up, and gentrification sets in.
Car ownership may be dipping because as the recession and jobless recovery lag on parents chose not to buy their kids cars or new cars and the sports car or hummer that mom and dad had for whatever reason other than practical transport are seen as unnecessary and even distasteful. We also just had a census so the population estimate may be more accurate.
As for New York rent being too high the problem is the extreme difficulty in building anything and that creates a shortage and drives up rent. If every 3 story building on Manhattan that is not historically significant was leveled or such as the Hearst building hollowed out and 5-10 story replacements came in the housing crisis in New York would be alleviated rents would go down and low income workers can afford to live near their workplace. If you want to make New York affordable then abolish the historic preservation commission and the right of neighborhood associations to block development. If rich New Yorkers want to stop development so that their garden terrace can receive three hours of direct sunlight in January then they need to pony up the money and buy out the land owners and developers who want to add housing and bring down the cost of rent. Eventually New York will cycle down again when businesses decide to relocate for lower housing cost and by extension lower wages. The solution for housing in New York is to build and build up.
NYC has about 9000 acres of vacant land - that's about 14 square miles, and even with high-density low-rise development that amount of space could potentially house about half a million people. And this is not even including the thousands of vacant existing buildings in the city. plus - you have entire neighborhoods in manhattan "full" of people who don't even live there most of the year.
"build tall" is a bunch of bullshit spewed by architects and developers who both want signature buildings and nice cushy profit margins that come from a particular zipcode.
same problem in Boston - there are places where a 700sf condo is selling for 600k but you can get a f-ing 3 bedroom house literally 1 mile down the street for 200k - but - it's surrounded by vacant lots and run-down buildings all owned by some real-estate venture waiting for the neighborhood to "turn."
""build tall" is a bunch of bullshit spewed by architects and developers who both want signature buildings and nice cushy profit margins that come from a particular zipcode"
Hallelujah!
Also, the whole "rental markets are supply and demand baby!" is bullshit as well. Vacancy levels have been steady in NYC for over a decade. By supply and demand logic, the supply must have gone down over the decade for the prices to have shot up. Math's just not there. The real culprit is near feudal rental laws that heavily favor the landlord. Rest is just naturally occurring extortion.
Time to update your stereotype on American's love affair with cars?
Can it be that the US has less cars per capita than almost every other developed nation?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/
I'll bet if they included two wheelers US would be even lower.
But if they put commercial vehicles, buses, and two wheelers, US would be #1 or 2
fta: "The Carnegie paper explains that car ownership rates are closely tied to the size of the middle class"
That pretty much explains everything. In other news, homeless population in NYC just recently hit an all time high. If they only had a car to sleep in...
rusty - the city ended rent subsidies - that's why there are more homeless people. I think bloomberg should also ship them off to minneapolis the first few days in september - I hear there's going to be a convention for people who like to yell "get a job" at battered single moms with young children and mentally ill drug addicts. because that's what they need to hear to turn their lives around.
"Young Americans are spending less of their money on cars, as Jordan Weissmann explained, as they get driver's licences at lower rates and spend more of their money on, say, high-tech smart phones.
Amazingly, Americans still manage to suck up far, far more energy per person than do the people in those Western European nations with so many more cars per capita. Our oil usage per capita is about twice what it is in Western Europe..."
Despite Europe's recent financial woes, Europe has become absurdly wealthy in the last 20 years.
Germany's GDP has seen like 60% growth since 1992 and 1700% growth since 1970. Not to mention, you can easily rent a 1-2 bedroom apartment in Berlin for less than 700 euros a month and closer to 400 euros a month if you feel like "slumming" it. Combine access of cheap rent and cheap medicine with low vehicle miles traveled and you have a recipe for a money-rich middle-class who can afford to spend conspicuously.
Unlike Europe, the United States can't afford to not use automobile— travel by automobile is a non-negotiable in most of the U.S.
The fact that automobile ownership is going down is actually quite troubling.
"rusty - the city ended rent subsidies - that's why there are more homeless people. "
it's amazing how many people are just holding on by a thread. Almost 50K homeless in NYC! Damn. It's become very noticeable when you walk down the street as well.
1br's go for $1200 in Bronx. Single moms that make $9 working at Starbucks are finding themselves out on the street. I was gonna take over a friend's lease in Brooklyn. $1500 for a cute 1br. Landlord blocked lease transfer and hiked the rent to $2300. Same place went for about $700 a decade ago.
This will be Bloomberg's most lasting legacy. Laissez faire shitfest that resembles a batman movie.
So cars. Yeah. Fuck cars. Cars are such a money pit to begin with. Like James points out, it's a shame that in most parts of the country you are subhuman without one.
1br's go for $1200 in Bronx.
This is the price we pay for a sterile city. Cities went from necessity to novelty. Growing up in NY in the 80's and 90's was amazing. It was a real city filled with real people, and with that comes a certain level of grit. Now NY is a cartoon version of itself, where people can experiance the city without any of the dangers of a city. It is now like a theme vacation filled with permanent tourists. The "wildness" and chaos of the "urban jungle" has been stripped away and replaced with something that soft rich hipsters can handle, a sort of "jungle resort". As a result the adventure of the city experiance goes away, prices go up, and gentrification sets in.
"Growing up in NY in the 80's and 90's was amazing"
Ah yes, the romantic memories of aids and crack pandemic.
And now it is Meth heads and copper thieves in suburbia.
Car ownership may be dipping because as the recession and jobless recovery lag on parents chose not to buy their kids cars or new cars and the sports car or hummer that mom and dad had for whatever reason other than practical transport are seen as unnecessary and even distasteful. We also just had a census so the population estimate may be more accurate.
As for New York rent being too high the problem is the extreme difficulty in building anything and that creates a shortage and drives up rent. If every 3 story building on Manhattan that is not historically significant was leveled or such as the Hearst building hollowed out and 5-10 story replacements came in the housing crisis in New York would be alleviated rents would go down and low income workers can afford to live near their workplace. If you want to make New York affordable then abolish the historic preservation commission and the right of neighborhood associations to block development. If rich New Yorkers want to stop development so that their garden terrace can receive three hours of direct sunlight in January then they need to pony up the money and buy out the land owners and developers who want to add housing and bring down the cost of rent. Eventually New York will cycle down again when businesses decide to relocate for lower housing cost and by extension lower wages. The solution for housing in New York is to build and build up.
NYC has about 9000 acres of vacant land - that's about 14 square miles, and even with high-density low-rise development that amount of space could potentially house about half a million people. And this is not even including the thousands of vacant existing buildings in the city. plus - you have entire neighborhoods in manhattan "full" of people who don't even live there most of the year.
"build tall" is a bunch of bullshit spewed by architects and developers who both want signature buildings and nice cushy profit margins that come from a particular zipcode.
same problem in Boston - there are places where a 700sf condo is selling for 600k but you can get a f-ing 3 bedroom house literally 1 mile down the street for 200k - but - it's surrounded by vacant lots and run-down buildings all owned by some real-estate venture waiting for the neighborhood to "turn."
""build tall" is a bunch of bullshit spewed by architects and developers who both want signature buildings and nice cushy profit margins that come from a particular zipcode"
Hallelujah!
Also, the whole "rental markets are supply and demand baby!" is bullshit as well. Vacancy levels have been steady in NYC for over a decade. By supply and demand logic, the supply must have gone down over the decade for the prices to have shot up. Math's just not there. The real culprit is near feudal rental laws that heavily favor the landlord. Rest is just naturally occurring extortion.
Back to cars. Last year another 2.6million Americans joined the poverty zone for a total of 46.2million people!
The poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314. How much does a car cost?
I second the Hallelujah!
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