Is NYC losing its character?

[davidfcooper]

Radio interview with two of the more pessimistic contributors to The Suburbanization of New York. It is interesting to learn that in Greenpoint, a blue collar Brooklyn neighborhood bordered to the north by Queens and to the west by the East River home prices rose 65% in 2006 (yes that's in one year, not five or ten years). The guests on the program predict that eventually the Bronx and Staten Island, which so far have remained more affordable, will also become strictly white collar. A caller points out that immigrants are starting to bypass the city and move straight to the more affordable suburbs citing several NJ towns as examples. In an earlier program guitarist David Bromberg related that when he decided to return to the northeast from Chicago he found NYC unaffordable and moved to Wilmington, DE instead. I imagine quite a few New Yorkers who have to relocate for school or work will find a few years later that returning to NYC is impossible on all but the most affluent budgets.

Comments

[weret-hekau.livejournal.com]

I was just talking to my husband about the fact that real estate prices have skyrocketed just in the last few years. It's ridiculous... and the bubble has to burst sooner or later even though they keep saying it won't. In some ways it doesn't surprise me. One of my coworkers has a daughter who's out of college and working now and she said to me "You should see these kids. They all have these really highpaying jobs....but they don't save a cent, they're not like we were." I think that's a big part of the problem. You have a lot of people with plenty of income willing to pay ridiculous prices. They don't have to be rich for this anymore, they're in debt up to their eyeballs even though they should never need to be in that kind of debt at their income levels. It can't keep up like this permanently because if it does, there aren't going to be any "workers" here.....and that's what I fear. This city has been moving toward a total disintegration of the middle class leaving nothing but rich and poor.