Good morning. We'll take a look at a troubling report on a problem that affects everyone in New York City — affordability. |
 | | Mike Segar/Reuters |
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I talked with my colleague Eliza Shapiro about the affordability crisis and the report from the Fund. |
This was disturbing but not really surprising, was it? |
Totally. What the report told us was something that New Yorkers are living with every day, which is that everything about living here has gotten harder except for the megarich. The report showed how hard it is for people to make rent, to comfortably afford housing and buy food, to say nothing of planning for the future or putting money away. This report put hard data and numbers to the reality that people are already living. |
One thing that jumped out at me was how much the researchers said the affordability crisis is affecting people who do everything you are supposed to do. That's so profound. They stuck it through during the pandemic, followed the rules and have contributed to the city returning to normal. They're commuting to work again, yet it's hard to make the rent and pay the bills. |
Lisette Nieves, the president of the Fund for the City of New York, said this amounted to a broken contract. That contract, for a long time in New York, meant that if you worked hard and lived reasonably frugally, you could have a comfortable life. |
New Yorkers and politicians and policymakers have been talking about how hard it is for the middle class to live here. That was a theme of Bill de Blasio's tenure as mayor, and Eric Adams talks about it a lot. But despite the rhetoric and the commitments, it 's hard to look back on the last decade and say things are moving in the right direction. |
One thing in the report that was surprising was that more households are worse off than at the worst of the pandemic. |
We all thought that New York City was at the nadir during the pandemic, that things couldn't get worse and that as Covid rates dropped, things would improve. |
Looking back, what happened was that the federal government created all these social safety net programs that were hugely beneficial — the P.P.P. loans and the stimulus package. All of that has disappeared over the last year. The safety net that the federal government created, which was hugely important for New York during the worst of times two and three years ago — having it go away has left people worse off. |
The report says you need to take home $100,000 to afford to live in New York — and to eat and afford transportation to work. That's a lot of money. It also says you need a minimum of $150,000 in parts of Manhattan that have the most expensive ZIP codes in the country. |
This idea of the six-figure salary has always loomed large as an achievement. To be able to make six figures, that should be a big deal. But we're finding that in most places in New York City, including the poorest parts of the Bronx, that's not enough money to live comfortably. You have to bring home well north of six figures to be able to live without worrying about basic expenses. That was a watershed moment, realizing that's the number we've reached. |
Which means that affordability, or the lack of it, ripples through the life of the city in so many ways. |
The affordability crisis is changing the city in ways that we don't yet fully understand. There's been a significant decline in public school enrollment. We know that people left during the pandemic, but now there's a sense that people who want to stay in New York — want to stay in the jobs they have here — are moving to the suburbs to have space they can afford for a family. Obviously the decline in public school enrollment is something that senior officials in the Adams administration are really concerned about. If the trend continues, how will they reallocate resources throughout the system? |
I also think about how much harder it is to be young and on a budget in New York. New York has always been a great place to be young, a great place to move to when you're just out of college. New York has always been about aspirations. But when everything is so much more expensive — finding a roommate, making the rent, going out to a show, going out to dinner — it's harder to be young here. I think that raises questions about whether we'll continue to be a destination for young people. |
One data point in the report that was striking was that for the majority of families that are struggling, at least one person in the household has at least some college credit or a bachelor's degree. We're talking about people who believed that going to college would start them on a secure path in life, and now they're struggling. |
That's why there's a reckoning in education about the worthiness of everyone going to college when it's so expensive. |
And Gov. Kathy Hochul's a plan to deal with the housing crisis fell apart. |
I think the failure of the affordable housing push couldn't come at a worse moment for legislators and government officials. New York's biggest concern is affordable housing. That's the nucleus of the affordability crisis, and it doesn't seem like much is going to change. |
I expect that we will see increasing pressure on politicians at the city and state levels to take meaningful action to make New York City more affordable for everyone, from low-income families to the upper middle class. |
Prepare for a chance of showers, persisting through the evening, with temps near 60. At night, temps will drop to around 50. |
In effect until May 18 (Solemnity of the Ascension). |
 | | Anna Watts for The New York Times |
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On an October morning, my girlfriend and I dashed up Fifth Avenue through a bitterly cold and driving rain to the Frick Collection. Our pocket umbrellas did little to protect us. |
When we arrived, the security guards checked our bags while rainwater puddled at our feet. We were soaked, but the museum was cozy and warm. |
As we wandered, a guard even agreed to look the other way while we took photos of a beautifully arranged collection of porcelain plates. (She admired them, too.) |
Afterward, still chilled after our soggy start, we decided to find a nearby lunch spot for a bowl of hot soup. We decided to go to a deli famous for matzo balls that was directly east of where we were and somewhere around Second Avenue. |
The rain had stopped, but the trees were still full of water. Big heavy drops landed on the sidewalk all around us. As we hurried along 70th Street, an older woman who was walking a dog stopped us. |
She said she had lived in the neighborhood for decades but had lost her way: Failing eyesight had clouded her sense of direction. |
Once we helped her get reoriented, she asked where we were headed. |
"For matzo ball soup off Second Avenue," we exclaimed. "Why — do you want to go there?" |
She gasped in alarm. Reorienting us this time, she pointed across the street. |
"The only place to go is right there," she said. |
She may have been losing her eyesight, but she knew her way around a bowl of matzo ball soup. She was right: It was delicious! |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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