What's Middle Class in Manhattan?

YankeeFan · Jan 20, 2013

Is there a middle class left in Manhattan?

In a city like New York, where everything is superlative, who exactly is middle class? What kind of salary are we talking about? Where does a middle-class person live? And could the relentless rise in real estate prices push the middle class to extinction?

“A lot of people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth,” said Cheryl King, an acting coach who lives and works in a combined apartment and performance space that she rents out for screenings, video shoots and workshops to help offset her own high rent.

“My niece just bought a home in Atlanta for $85,000,” she said. “I almost spend that on rent and utilities in a year. To them, making $250,000 a year is wealthy. To us, it’s maybe the upper edge of middle class.”

“It’s horrifying,” she added.

Her horror, of course, is Manhattan’s high cost of living, which has for decades shocked transplants from Kansas and elsewhere, and threatened natives with the specter of an economic apocalypse that will empty the city of all but a few hardy plutocrats.

And yet the middle class stubbornly hangs on, trading economic pain for the emotional gain of hot restaurants, the High Line and the feeling of being in the center of everything. The price tag for life’s basic necessities — everything from milk to haircuts to Lipitor to electricity, and especially housing — is more than twice the national average.

“It’s overwhelmingly housing — that’s the big distortion relative to other places,” said Frank Braconi, the chief economist in the New York City comptroller’s office. “Virtually everything costs more, but not to the degree that housing does.”

The average Manhattan apartment, at $3,973 a month, costs almost $2,800 more than the average rental nationwide. The average sale price of a home in Manhattan last year was $1.46 million, according to a recent Douglas Elliman report, while the average sale price for a new home in the United States was just under $230,000. The middle class makes up a smaller proportion of the population in New York than elsewhere in the nation. New Yorkers also live in a notably unequal place. Household incomes in Manhattan are about as evenly distributed as they are in Bolivia or Sierra Leone — the wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites make 40 times more than the lowest fifth, according to 2010 census data.

Ask people around the country, “Are you middle class?” and the answer is likely to be yes. But ask the same question in Manhattan, and people often pause in confusion, unsure exactly what you mean.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/realestate/what-is-middle-class-in-manhattan.html?hp
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Lugnuts · Jan 20, 2013

There's so so so much more to New York City than Manhattan. As I'm sure the comments section will take care of pointing out!

imjustagirl · Jan 20, 2013

I was interested in a job that paid more than I'd ever made in my life. I looked for housing, even in Brooklyn, and realized I'd have to be in a 500 sf walkup and would have to eat pasta every night with butter just to pay the bills.

Captain Obvious · Jan 20, 2013

imjustagirl said:

I was interested in a job that paid more than I'd ever made in my life. I looked for housing, even in Brooklyn, and realized I'd have to be in a 500 sf walkup and would have to eat pasta every night with butter just to pay the bills.
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What's wrong with Paterson?

Drip · Jan 20, 2013

Harlem is still the best bargain in Manhattan.

LongTimeListener · Jan 20, 2013

Middle class is middle class is middle class. If someone chooses to live in Manhattan, that's no different a choice than it would be for me to buy a boat and say I'm having trouble paying the insurance.

Ask people around the country, “Are you middle class?” and the answer is likely to be yes. But ask the same question in Manhattan, and people often pause in confusion, unsure exactly what you mean.
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That's just because people like to exaggerate how put upon they are. It makes them feel like they're working harder or more in touch with the common man.

CHETtheJET · Jan 20, 2013

If you have to ask, then you cant afford it.

old_tony · Jan 20, 2013

When I lived (briefly) in New York in 1984, I lived in Flushing near the end of the 7 line. My midwestern sensibilities were stunned when I got there and went to grab a fish sandwich at McDonald's and saw it was about twice what a McDonald's fish sandwich (sorry, Filet O' Fish) cost back in the home town.

What we said back then was "New York is a young man's town and a rich man's town, but young and rich rarely intersect unless you're born to it.

Drip · Jan 20, 2013

old_tony said:

When I lived (briefly) in New York in 1984, I lived in Flushing near the end of the 7 line. My midwestern sensibilities were stunned when I got there and went to grab a fish sandwich at McDonald's and saw it was about twice what a McDonald's fish sandwich (sorry, Filet O' Fish) cost back in the home town.

What we said back then was "New York is a young man's town and a rich man's town, but young and rich rarely intersect unless you're born to it.
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And don't forget about the Old. Their road isn't paved.

The Big Ragu · Jan 21, 2013

imjustagirl said:

I was interested in a job that paid more than I'd ever made in my life. I looked for housing, even in Brooklyn, and realized I'd have to be in a 500 sf walkup and would have to eat pasta every night with butter just to pay the bills.
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The even in Brooklyn part. ... might have been the problem.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577547231942958966.html

That story caught my attention last year.

Parts of Manhattan have actually been getting a bit less expensive, while most of Brooklyn has been getting more expensive. It's to the point that a lot of people who moved to Brooklyn 10 years ago are now moving back into Manhattan, because you can find relatively (and it is relative -- people outside of NYC wouldn't get it) reasonable rents on the Upper East Side.

In Brooklyn, DUMBO, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights were already really expensive, with Cobble Hill right behind. But Williamsburg has fully caught up. And Boerum Hill, the downtown area, Carroll Gardens, even Red Hook, and a bunch of other neighborhoods have seen their rental prices go way up as people have gotten squeezed out of other areas.

There are still pockets in Queens where you can get more reasonable rents. Brooklyn is too hip and too close. The place to look now might be the Bronx.

As for the whole middle class thing, you can earn what sounds like F U money to a lot of people on here, and not be living quite the life people who are not from here assume. If there is a middle class here, I am probably it. But I have often said I feel like there is no middle class. There are uberwealthy people (way more of them in Manhattan and Brooklyn) and struggling people (way more of them in Queens and the Bronx). I guess stuck in between are people who scrap by in Manhattan and Brooklyn, earning OK money but still scraping by. You see it in the housing that has been built in Manhattan in the last two decades. There were luxury buildings sprouting up all over the place. But no housing for regular people.

Drip · Jan 21, 2013

The Big Ragu said:

imjustagirl said:

I was interested in a job that paid more than I'd ever made in my life. I looked for housing, even in Brooklyn, and realized I'd have to be in a 500 sf walkup and would have to eat pasta every night with butter just to pay the bills.
Click to expand...

The even in Brooklyn part. ... might have been the problem.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577547231942958966.html

That story caught my attention last year.

Parts of Manhattan have actually been getting a bit less expensive, while most of Brooklyn has been getting more expensive. It's to the point that a lot of people who moved to Brooklyn 10 years ago are now moving back into Manhattan, because you can find relatively (and it is relative -- people outside of NYC wouldn't get it) reasonable rents on the Upper East Side.

In Brooklyn, DUMBO, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights were already really expensive, with Cobble Hill right behind. But Williamsburg has fully caught up. And Boerum Hill, the downtown area, Carroll Gardens, even Red Hook, and a bunch of other neighborhoods have seen their rental prices go way up as people have gotten squeezed out of other areas.

There are still pockets in Queens where you can get more reasonable rents. Brooklyn is too hip and too close. The place to look now might be the Bronx.

As for the whole middle class thing, you can earn what sounds like F U money to a lot of people on here, and not be living quite the life people who are not from here assume. If there is a middle class here, I am probably it. But I have often said I feel like there is no middle class. There are uberwealthy people (way more of them in Manhattan and Brooklyn) and struggling people (way more of them in Queens and the Bronx). I guess stuck in between are people who scrap by in Manhattan and Brooklyn, earning OK money but still scraping by. You see it in the housing that has been built in Manhattan in the last two decades. There were luxury buildings sprouting up all over the place. But no housing for regular people.
Click to expand...

Wow you are middle class? Wake up. Can you pay your bills, save some loot and take a nice three-week vacation to a place where you have never been and don't know anyone? If you are fortunate to be in such a position, I might put you at middle class. I've said it before and I'll say it again, NYC is a place where you can make six figures and still be broke.

Azrael · Jan 21, 2013

Drip said:

Harlem is still the best bargain in Manhattan.
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Not since the last real estate boom.

Comparatively, Inwood and Washington Heights - far to the north - are the last "bargains" uptown.

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What's Middle Class in Manhattan?

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