Archives for July 2010

Suburbs in the News: Is it Actually Cheaper to Live in the City Than in the Suburbs?

July 20, 2010 by

A really interesting article in the New York Times recently by Tara Siegel Bernard asking the question whether, contrary to popular perception, it’s actually cheaper to live in the city than in the suburbs.

The answer, of course, is that it is MUCH more expensive to live in the city.  There. Now you save a few minutes of your life, and you don’t have to go read the article.

But if you have some time, go check it out:

Here’s what we found: a suburban lifestyle costs about 18 percent more than living in the city. Even a house in the suburbs with a price tag substantially lower than an urban apartment will, on a monthly basis, often cost more to keep running. And then there’s the higher cost of commuting from the suburbs, or the expense of buying a car (or two) and paying the insurance.

The Times says the city is actually cheaper for a family making about $175,000 a year, mostly because people in the suburbs have two significant additional costs: property taxes and cars.  The only caveat was that if the couple is going to put their kids in private school in the city, then the suburbs start to become more competitive.

Now, a couple of things about that.  I absolutely agree with the point that sometimes people miscalculate the additional costs of living in the suburbs from needing a car, or multiple cars, and having to pay property taxes.  I’m not so sure that the average family taking a lot of cabs every month doesn’t narrow that gap, but I will absolutely agree that property taxes in the city are ridiculously low.  My brownstone in the city had four units, which altogether were probably worth about $7-8 million, and the property taxes on the building were about $25,000. In Westchester, you pay property taxes like that for a $1M house.  No question that’s an issue.  Property taxes are horrible.

But I think that the analysis in the article missed a couple of things.  First, the article cheats a little, because the theoretical couple in question ends up buying a median priced ($675,000) home in Park Slope.  I know that the people in Brooklyn might hunt me down and pelt me with artisanal cheeses, but let’s be honest — Park Slope is itself a suburb.

(Sounds of a fine handmade gouda hitting flesh).

Seriously?  We’re going to try to compare living in the city versus living in the suburbs, and the Times’s idea of “living in the city” is Park Slope?  Why not go out to Bay Ridge?  Or Flushing?  I’ll bet it’s even cheaper there. Sheesh.

Second, on the other side of the equation, I would have liked to see the Times look at some homes other than in South Orange, New Jersey, where the median price for a four bedroom home is apparently about $600,000.  For one thing, that’s a lot higher than the median price in a lot of the other suburbs of Manhattan.  For another, if the basic gist of the article is to make side-by-side comparisons, I’m not so sure that a two-bedroom, one-bath coop in Park Slope is the analogue to a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house anywhere.  If you have two kids, that two-bedroom is going to be a wee cramped.  Forget it if you have three. You’ll have all that extra expense of defending yourself in court when you kill one of them, or your wife, or a hapless cabbie in a fit of parental rage.

So if you were to look at, say, a 3 bedroom coop or condo in Manhattan, a REAL city (ducking a handmade wheel of brie), against a four-bedroom home in some other counties ringing Manhattan, you’d have a much bigger spread.

Third, and most importantly, I don’t see anything in the Times’s analysis of the increased cost of everyday living in the city compared to the suburbs.  That’s the real savings that you get for foregoing all the wonderful things that the city has to offer.  Everything is cheaper. Everything. Your food, your drinks, your dry cleaning, your toilet paper.  Everything.  I would think that this would add up.

Listen, I love the city. I lived in the city for 17 years. I miss it, and would still live there if: (1) I didn’t actually work outside the city (which makes me different from most people making this decision), and (2) I wasn’t looking to raise a family and realizing that I really wanted the extra space.  I recognize all the drawbacks of living in the suburbs — hell, this blog is basically one long post about the drawbacks of living in the suburbs — but increased expenses are not one of them.

Filed Under: Best of, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, News Tagged With: , , ,

In the News: Heavens! Could it Be That Young, Bright People Are Leaving the Suburbs and Moving to the Cities?

July 17, 2010 by

A few months ago, we noted a Brookings Institution report on the rise of poverty in the suburbs.  That report has now started to generate some chatter, with the Wall Street Journal taking the data and speculating breathlessly that the rise of suburban poverty is associated with the startling idea that young, upwardly mobile people are starting to choose to move to cities:  “In a historic first, many young, prosperous Americans are moving from the suburbs to the city.”

Similarly, the Huffington Post reported a Brookings demographer saying that “what used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into ‘bright flight’ to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambience as an attraction.”

For a second, I was starting to wonder about whether I’m on the wrong end of the trend — that the suburbs are winding down and everyone’s moving to the cities.  But here’s the thing: young, prosperous Americans HAVE ALWAYS MOVED FROM THE SUBURBS TO THE CITY.  That’s actually the WHOLE POINT of having cities, so young people can go and get educated and get cool jobs and drink fancy drinks and dance in clubs and meet other young people and fall in love and get married, at which point many of them MOVE BACK TO THE SUBURBS.

That is, I have absolutely no doubt that young people are moving into the city.  That’s what I did, back 20 years ago when apparently the suburbs weren’t a haven for poverty and ruin.  I was DYING to move to the city after growing up in the New York City suburbs.  I loved the city so much that when I got a job clerking for a judge in Uniondale, I commuted an hour each way just so I wouldn’t have to live in Long Island (no offense, guys…).  That’s what young people do.

So I’m not so sure what news people think they’re breaking.  Maybe next week we’ll have a “trend” report that old people are FLEEING THE NORTH and moving to Florida!

Yes, young people are moving to the suburbs.  Like they always have.  The bigger question is whether they’ll stay there once they’re not so young anymore, or, like me, they’ll give in to reality and exile themselves back to the suburbs.  At the very least, if they start moving back, they might help that poverty situation that seems to be generating so much buzz.

Filed Under: News, Suburbs versus Cities Tagged With: , , , , ,

Why the Fourth of July is the Best Holiday of the Year — Particularly When You Can Watch Fireworks from Your Home

July 1, 2010 by

I love the Fourth of July.  It’s absolutely the best holiday of the year, much better than Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Christmas is great, particularly when you’re a kid.  But as an adult, Christmas is mostly a big pain.  You have to go buy a bunch of presents, stress about whether you need to buy presents for this or that person.  You have to figure out how much to tip various people in your life  (the guy who delivers the newspaper, seriously?) .  And I always end up having to go to like a million holiday parties all through December, which just leaves me a big soggy fat mess.  And, of course, not everyone celebrates Christmas, so we all end up in that ugly “if you say ‘Merry Christmas’ you must hate the Jews, and if you say ‘Happy Holidays’ you murdered the baby Jesus” fight every year.

Thanksgiving is great, and everyone who matters (i.e., Americans) celebrate it, but it’s also kind of a pain.  Lots of travel, all that cooking, and half the time I end up getting sick and lying on the bathroom floor groaning all day Friday.  That’s not a fun holiday.

New Year’s Eve sucks.  Don’t talk to me about New Year’s Eve.

Memorial Day and Labor Day are just three day weekends.  One of them starts the summer, the other ends it, and I can never remember which is which.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t count. If you don’t get the day off, it’s not a holiday. Sorry, honey.

The Fourth of July is just awesome:

  • We all get to celebrate. You say “Happy Fourth of July” to someone, you don’t start a culture war.
  • The weather is great.  A summer holiday.  Sadly, no football like Thanksgiving, but you can’t have everything.
  • It’s easy.  To celebrate the Fourth, you need a pool, and a barbecue.  You’re done.  You want to get a couple of sparklers, go nuts.  Throwing hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill is nothing compared to figuring out a stuffing recipe for a turkey.
  • No obligations. No church, no temple, no getting dressed up.  Bathing suit.  T shirt.  That’s the uniform.  I know that some towns have a reading of the Declaration of Independence, which sounds just wonderfully patriotic but a horrible distraction from eating more hotdogs.
  • It’s not a “family” holiday.  No traveling 200 miles in traffic to see that uncle who put his creepy hand on your knee when you were 12, or your mother’s cousin’s estranged aunt or whatever.  If you like your family, spend the day with them.  If not, no one’s going to guilt you for blowing them off.

And, of course, you get fireworks.  Glorious fireworks.  The sun goes down, the fireworks go off, you eat some watermelon, you relish the fact that you’ve got another two months of summer.

So I love the Fourth of July.  In fact, it was one of the real, if minor, selling points of this condo we bought.  From our terrace we have a full frontal view of Memorial Park in Nyack, which is where the village has its fireworks show every year.  It’s like having an apartment on the Upper East Side overlooking the East River fireworks, except, of course, that it’s not.  It’s in the suburbs.

So not the same.  But fireworks are fireworks, and this year we’ll be looking at them from about 200 feet in the sky, almost eye level with where the explosions happen.  And I guess it’s not as good as having that Upper East Side penthouse, but it’s a lot better than standing on a crowded, hot street in Manhattan shoulder-to-shoulder with about a million other sweaty people and craning my neck to see the show.  I’ll be in a chair.  Drinking.  So that’s pretty good.

Happy Fourth of July!

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,