Angry New Yorker

Semi-Daily Rants from New York City's Angry Man

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly." - Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Sept. 1783

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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
 
Good-bye Columbus Avenue

The debate about NYC as a viable city for the middle-class where the next generation can still live as well as the previous generation is over. NYC is closed to the middle-class, if you define middle-class as at least living as well as what NYC once defined as middle-class. As evidence to support this statement, consider the following:

A house, three houses up the block from my parents' house in north Flushing, near Bayside, just went on the market at the asking price of $699,000. (http://www.realtor.com/Prop/1028626078). That price is NOT a typo, and I'm sure the place needs a new kitchen and general updating from stem to stern. I knew the owner, a charming old lady -- Helen was her name if I recall -- who I, as a teenager, shoveled snow for and generally helped out on occassion with little errands. The house itself is an average-sized house in the area -- and even smaller than many of the houses nearby. My parents' house is of exactly the same tudor style, and was built at the same time in the '40's.

The Realtor.com description at the link above strikes me as stretching things a bit. Four bedrooms? Only three by my counting, unless you in fact count the basement, or an extra room was added onto the back, which as far as I know wasn't. 2.5 baths? Again, only if an extra room was added onto the back. Solar? I have no idea what that means. Den/family room? Try your basic living room off the dining room. Estimated annual taxes: $2636? Not a chance in the world after you've bought it for $699K. Add one to two thousand to that figure. But these items are mere quibbles.

My parents bought their house up the block around 1981, I think, for roughly a bit over $80,000. So, in 22 years the house has appreciated by approximately 773%, or roughly 35% a year. Now there was one very good year, back in 1993 where I did actually get a raise in salary of 35% -- but that was a unique situation -- and my salary since has never topped that glory year, and in fact, diminished. See where I'm going with this? Realtor.com estimates the monthly mortgage payments (with its default assumptions of a 30-year mortgage at 6.3% with a 20% down payment ) as $3,461 a month. If you spend 40% of your net salary on the mortgage (and this figure is not uncommon in NYC) you'd have to pull in about $103,000 - after taxes, or about $145,000 gross. That is NOT the average middle-class person's salary in NYC. Nor is half that. And this house is not some special case in the north Flushing area.

Here's another one, three blocks away from the one above, which in my opinion is a hideous house on a very high-traffic corner of Utopia Parkway and 33rd Avenue - MLS ID#: 1523020 - listed for $695,000. Directly opposite from this house they just tore down an amazing large house that dated back to at least the '30's, with a barn-like garage and beautiful spanish-featured architecture, and are no doubt going to slap a few square, brick-like two-family houses on the lot and sell them off to new arrivals who don't know any better and who have no sense of what is steadily being lost in the neighborhood. And yet another one on Utopia Parkway -- MLS #1506034 -- just down the block from the house above, for $675,000. That $699K price for the house on my parents' block - a much quieter and out-of-the-way block - is not a fluke.

But it raises the questions: Who has this kind of money to spend? How did they manage to amass a 20% down payment figure of $139,800 in this post 2000 stock-market bubble popping economy?

More troubling, though. In 25 years, will my children have to pay $5,137,650 for this self-same little house if prices keep going up in the area an average of 35% per year? I don't see how it's sustainable, and frankly I'd tell them they were crazy. Or worse, the monied development interests in NYC will manage to get zoning changed in the area, and then every one-family house will eventually be torn-down and a multi-family put on the lot(s). The economics are simply ineffable and ineluctable.

Which returns me to my initial statement. NYC is no longer a middle-class friendly city, unless you define middle-class down from a state of being able to afford a reasonably comfortable, detached single-family house.

posted by anonymous at 11:41 AM

Monday, August 18, 2003
 
Notes After the Blackout

New York, N.Y. - Out here in Queens the power returned at 3:05 p.m., Friday, roughly 23 hours after the grid went down.
I was very lucky yesterday, in that I'd just gotten out of the subway on Lexington and 77th and was walking west toward Central Park to serve a subpoena on Rupert Murdoch, of all people, at 3 East 77th. I get to the building and the doorman's in front with a flashlight. I say to myself that's weird... not strange, just weird. He yells across the street to the doorman in the building across "Hey, Jose, you got power over there?" No, says Jose. I'm bemused, but not detered and attempt to serve the subpoena anyway.
But then I look up the block and the traffic lights at both ends are dark. Hmmm.. this doesn't seem right. People are starting to mill around and come out of buildings like clowns from those old tiny trick cars. I walk back to Lex to see if any trains are heading downtown, and one glance down the subway staircase tells me the power is completely
out. No one around me is quite sure how extensive the loss is, yet. I get my wife on the cellphone, the last call I'm able to make all day, and she says the power is off at 47th and Sixth. I know then immediately that this is more than a little outage and tell her to sit tight. I pass a guy who asks "where is power off?" I answer "well, at least down to 47th street" and a woman on the corner interjects "I just got off my cellphone and its off at least down to 39th street." I turn back to the guy "how's that for an instant update?" We laugh and I
start walking again.
Walking downtown from 77th to 47th I notice the streets steadily growing more crowded and gridlocked.
Amazingly, however, I did not see ONE car accident in the entire exodus attributable to a lack of traffic lights. Around sixth and Rockefeller Center the streets were nearly pedestrian malls and gridlock was total. Grabbing a few bottles of water I reached my wife's building, asked the guard if everyone was out (no), and waited. Somehow my wife was able to cal l my cellphone, then, but the outbond cell circuits were completely jammed. Her building had a massive generator running and they not only still had lights, but AC, which was extremely welcome after the long walk. People were huddled on the street around parked cars listening to the news reports -- "Detroit's out" "Cleveland is out" More than a few people were asking "Is this another terrorist strike?" My first inclination was along the same lines... if I were a terrorist why bother with having to deal with security at the border if I could simply knock out some towers in Canada and have the effect ripple down into the U.S.? No fuss, no muss.
My wife came down with a few co-workers and we joined the streaming exodus heading uptown toward the 59th street bridge. The mood was jovial, the tone light, and everyone was simply taking in the pure
strangeness of the situation. Bars were dark but crowded with people drinking beers. Sidewalk vendors were doing a quick business, but not gouging anyone -- $1 for a bottle of water; the regular price.
At the 59th street bridge we took the upper level, and the crowd essentially took over the right lane while cars inched along in the left lane. The lanes coming west into Manhattan were stopped dead, and I actually felt sorry for the drivers foolish enough to have decided to try and drive into Manhattan - they were going nowhere fast, and would
be going nowhere any time soon. On the bridge there was absolutely no breeze, but a flock of news, police and other helicopters buzzed Manhattan likes seagulls behind a fishing trawler. We waived to the folks passing in the Circleline below on the East River... they saw us and waved back. More than a few women were walking in their socks,
heels in hand, and on the other side of the bridge we saw a family trying to walk up against the human tide into Manhattan, each one wheeling a large red suitcase behind them. Good luck was my thought.
Once off the bridge the crowd seemed singleminded in heading up Queens Blvd., but we'd had enough of the slow pace and decided if we were ever going to make it home we needed to pick up the pace. Cutting a block over we found the sidewalk nearly empty and started the long trudge east.
Passing Greenpoint avenue most of the small stores and delis were open, but controlling access. We bought some cherry Italian ices, which definitely hit the spot and keep on walking. Meeting up with Queens Blvd again the crowd was quiet, tired and very sweaty. A number of families living nearby set up little water booths
on cardboard cartoons and handed out free glasses of water to passers by. The police started to make appearances, but I still hadn't see any car accidents, and Queens Blvd. is known as the Blvd of Death here in NY for the numerous pedestrian fatalities that occur each year. (Maybe fewer traffic lights are the answer?).
At LeFrak City, near where Queens Blvd hits the LIE we split off onto Woodhaven Blvd and headed south. The crowd had thinned, but was still walking, though at time point my feet were killing me and I could definitely feel a blister or two. At this point we'd been walking about 2.5 hours.
After another 1/2 hour it was starting to get dark and we had roughly another two miles to go and were bushed. I popped into the street, stuck my thumb out, and in a few minutes we were sitting in the back of this guy's Jaguar. He dropped us off a few blocks from home and kept on going to see if he could find his wife.
Everything was completely, obviously, dark at this point, and the nearly full moon hung in the south east sky, with a brilliant Mars off to its right. Out came the candles, the propane lantern, the battery radio, and the blackout of 2003 began.

posted by anonymous at 3:23 PM

Friday, August 08, 2003
 
GOTHAM'S DEEPENING HOLE

NY Post, August 8, 2003 -- "Quite simply, it's wrong to structure something aimed at getting the city $170 million that's going to cost the taxpayers of this city and this state over $5.1 billion to refinance debt that was incurred in 1975. In 2033, taxpayers in New York City will be paying off debt incurred in 1975. There's a better way."

- Gov. Pataki, explaining his opposition yesterday to a plan to relieve New York City of $2.2 billion in debt, currently scheduled to be repaid in five years, by shifting it to the state, stretching payments to 30 years and incurring some $2.6 billion in additional interest costs


posted by anonymous at 11:16 AM

Thursday, August 07, 2003
 
At least the rats are doing well here in NYC.
From the New York Times

A Detested Emblem of Decay Is Scurrying Back. Ah, Rats!By COREY KILGANNON

Even for New York City, it was a bizarre specter: a firehouse closed because it had been taken over by rats.

They had invaded the firefighters' kitchen and lounge and the chief's office, and seemed only to grow in number and boldness, despite copious use of rat poison. On Tuesday, the city temporarily relocated the firefighters and ordered that the house be gutted and rebuilt.

But many residents, exterminators and politicians believe that the infested firehouse in Jamaica, Queens, is only part of a much larger citywide rat problem.

The number of rat complaints received by the city has sharply increased lately. And city officials and exterminators say a combination of circumstances — from an underfinanced government abatement program to reduced recycling pickups to heavy rainfall — seem to have created a boom time for rats in the city. [more]


posted by anonymous at 11:39 AM

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