For a Long Life, Retire in Manhattan | Hacker News Reader

For a Long Life, Retire in Manhattan

nytimes.com

137 pointsdanso95 comments

I was pretty depressed about leaving Manhattan and at the thought that if I ever came back, I wouldn't be as young as I was or have as many friends (many have also left to start families elsewhere). Reading this essay reminded me of all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but still enjoying myself just the same. If I'm at that age where most of my close friends and family have passed and I have the money, I would definitely love to live my last days in Manhattan.

edit: Another characteristic of New York is the rate of change. Construction is never finished. I still keep in touch with my roommate on FB and she's constantly posting photos of decades-old restaurants and businesses closing shop, and she's been in the apartment for almost 30 years. I'd have that same disappointment/outrage when my favorite places shut down but -- as long as they aren't replaced by sterile condos -- I've loved the variety of new stuff that came in their stead. Living in NY definitely makes you realize that nothing is forever and just about everything can be forgotten or replaced, and you learn to be at peace with it.

> all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but still enjoying myself just the same.

This is one of the things I love best about the city. If I want to be alone, but out in public, I can be. I don't have to worry about running into some acquaintance and having to make small-talk when all I want to do is go for an urban nature-walk.

I've very recently moved from the city to the suburbs and I've probably spent more time making small talk with my neighbors in the past 10 days than I've spent making small talk with my neighbors in the 10 preceding years, despite the fact that then number of people who could be considered my 'neighbors' has dropped by an order of magnitude.

I am really not too sure how I feel about this.

Similar situation. I realize now that the best neighbors are the ones you never see.

Most notable for me is when I go out to a restaurant in Manhattan I see many tables full of grown ups and seniors having lively discussions. In SF it's like that Star Trek episode where a virus kills off all the adults and leaves only children.

...kills off all the adults and leaves children at the dinner table on their cell phones.

Southern California is a lot more age-balanced in that respect than the SF Bay Area. Depends a lot on where you go, but plenty of places in L.A. and San Diego are full of older people. Especially certain times of day, e.g. breakfast at any diner is mostly older people.

The data disagrees with your assessment.

    Population by age range, SF vs LA:
    20-24:  3.8% /  8.1%
    25-34: 21.5% / 18.3%
    35-44: 16.3% / 15.8%
    45-54: 14.0% / 11.6%
    55-64: 12.4% /  7.0%
    65+:   15.2% /  9.7%

    SF vs SD:
    20-24:  3.8% /  9.0%
    25-34: 21.5% / 17.7%
    35-44: 16.3% / 16.2%
    45-54: 14.0% / 12.1%
    55-64: 12.4% /  7.0%
    65+:   15.2% / 10.5%

That means a recent grad in San Francisco will have a harder time dating girls around his age and dating pool will increase as he approaches 34.

This smells to me like confirmation bias. The actual demographic data shows SF skews older than Manhattan:

    Population by age range, SF vs Manhattan:
    20-24:  3.8% /  7.4%
    25-34: 21.5% / 22.7%
    35-44: 16.3% / 14.6%
    45-54: 14.0% / 12.8%
    55-64: 12.4% / 11.4%
    65+:   15.2% / 14.4%

Income in SF probably skews younger, though.

Doesn't that say more about OP's taste in restaurants than SF's demographics?

What's the source for your data? While searching, I found this [0] which seems to have some detail by zipcode. (I had thought "Maybe he means in restaurants in the Mission?", suggestion: nope).

[0] http://www.sfhip.org/index.php?module=DemographicData&type=u...

That's the correct link; skip to the second table, after the zip codes.

Even if SF's population "skews older" than Manhattan's, it doesn't refute the original commenter's anecdote. Older people in SF may dine out less than older people in Manhattan do - perhaps for financial or logistical or cultural reasons.

Or they dine out somewhere else and appear in someone else's anecdotes. Many restaurants attract or repel specific age ranges, often as a deliberate marketing policy: if a restaurant is full of young people it is, usually, a restaurant for young people, for example because it plays trendy dance music fairly loud or because it's close to a university campus.

Just a theory:

Manhattan has fewer young people with the means to dine out frequently. It's full of young people who want to be artists, fashion designers, etc... Most people who can afford fancy restaurant meals in Manhattan are older, more established in whatever their chosen career.

SF has a larger percentage of young people who are already wealthy (or middle class) from tech the sector. And thus more young people there dine out, more frequently.

As a tourist my immediate impression is that the infrastructure is quite old compared to other world cities (why are the subways so hot?) and the touristy areas are a lot dirtier than I would have expected. There are also some NY-isms that I haven't seen in other American cities (terror alert levels, garbage bags piled up on sidewalks, ubiquitous taxies, tourists literally everywhere)

I like how it's basically a microcosm of the entire world, and you can reach all of it without a car, but I'm not sure it's worth the inconveniences plus 3x cost of living.

New York had one of the first subway systems in the world. It's not air conditioned because they didn't have AC at the turn of the 20th century. The street grid was also designed without alleys, hence the trash bags.

Upper West Sider here: Subway cars of course have AC. Older cars sometimes break AC but the newer ones have backup compressors so that doesn't happen.

I do think they could at least have some high speed fans in parts of the subway stations, esp. for the elderly who don't tolerate heat as well as others.

New York City is a great place to be old and either healthy or rich. Otherwise, you run into problems not addressed in the article - such as the tremendous lack of handicapped access in the subways.

We lived at 145th on the ABCD line. There's precisely one escalator that takes you from the lowest platform to the mezzanine, skipping the mid-level platform in between. Then there are stairs to get to street-level. There are no elevators. So when my father, in his 70s, came to visit us, he had a hell of a time getting down the stairs. We ended up specifically planning trips so that we would arrive on the lower platform, so we could take the escalator.

All the walking does have health benefits, but if you're not capable of it, you better live near some accessible stations, or you end up being reliant on cars and access-a-ride (which, granted, I know nothing about - maybe it's fantastic.)

Having typed all that, I'd rather be old and feeble here than, say, in Dallas, where I have to drive, until I'm no longer able to, and then have to rely on others for transportation. I'd gladly take a 20-minute journey down a stairwell that takes others 20 seconds for the freedom it would afford me.

It's true that there are a lot of inaccessible subway stations, but at the same time you're much more likely to be able to go about 90% of your life just walking around your neighborhood—restaurants, grocery, doctors, etc, all within a 10 minute walk is pretty standard in Manhattan.

how long until self driving cars in dallas?

Probably awhile.

I can't reply to parasitius, because his comment is dead, but it's also nonsense.

> Just because you get to zone out all the while doesn't mean your day isn't deprived of an immense amount of time.

I'm glad that Austin is working out for him, but we can't shrink all cities, nor should we. 45 minutes of free time is still 45 minutes of free time.

This is such terrible reasoning, the London tube was opened 40 years before NYC and they used wooden carriages pulled by a steam train.

To suggest the reason the subway doesn't have air conditioning is because "It's old" is laughable.

The London one only has air conditioning on the shallower lines' trains, since there is enough ventilation for the waste heat to dissipate. New York should be able to do the same.

I think London is still working on cooling the deep, "tube" lines, where the clearance between train and tunnel is around 20cm.

Sure - I guess the point I'm making is that technology has advanced significantly in the time

I disagree. Even though the infrastructure is old, the public transportation in Manhattan is leagues better than most other American cities, considering what you can access. Especially the bay area.

Living in the NYC area is also much cheaper even before figuring for car ownership costs.

Living in NYC isn't cheap, and unlike other cities, the housing quality is old and terrible.

For a tiny studio in a shabby 100 year old prewar walkup tenement building in Manhattan, you're looking at a minimum of $2,000/month. Most people pay $1,400+/month to live in old converted apartments (ie. putting up a wall to turn the living room into another bedroom) with roommates, and often the bedrooms are too small to even have room for a desk, and the window faces directly into another building (if there even is a window). In these buildings you're not going to have AC (meaning you need to buy a window AC unit), a dishwasher, trash compactor, elevator, and all the other luxuries we take for granted anywhere else in the modern world. I spent 3 years in one of these buildings, and the apartment was perpetually too hot (even in the winter), and there was nothing I could do because heat in the unit was not controllable. Apparently this is fairly normal in these buildings.

If you want to live anywhere nice and somewhat modern that isn't a dump, you're looking at a minimum of $3,000/month for a studio, $4,000/month for a 1BR, etc.

And want to buy a place? You're looking at a minimum of $500k for any studio that isn't a total piece of crap, and they're going to want a 20% down payment. And who wants to raise a family in a studio?

I live in a 3BR which is currently around $2.5k/month in beautiful Brooklyn just minutes from the A, C, and G trains. Next week I'll hear back as to whether or not I also have a $1k/mo studio with yard in a well-kept brownstone at the belt of Morningside Park. Most of my friends with studios pay around $1.5k to be in either newly renovated units in not-so-hot areas (upper reaches of Harlem for example) or tiny (200 sq ft) and run down units in more hot areas such as the East Village. None of these are rent controlled or stabilized. Your numbers are the worst case– maybe what you should budget for coming from out of town and looking for a first place, but certainly not the norm if you're looking on a budget. A quick search just now shows at least a couple good listings in the $2400-2900 range for 2BR in the East Village. In my opinion the two big takeaways from these discussions are that (1) New York is what you make of it and (2) New York, due in no small part to its transit system, is bigger than just downtown or uptown Manhattan. I've never had the amenities you listed even growing up so it's likely I don't appreciate them in the same way but there's plenty of other things the city offers to make up for it.

You're minutes from the A,C, and G, but how long is your commute to Manhattan (and where in Manhattan)? How reliable are those trains (eg. on the weekends)? Is it safe at night? Mind if I ask where in Brooklyn? (I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just genuinely curious because I'm actually looking for a place right now)

Sure you can live in Harlem for cheap, but you're a bit removed and it doesn't exactly feel safe. These days it's gotten better, but I still wouldn't recommend a woman walk alone there at night. Living in what feels like a giant housing project isn't exactly what I consider the desirable "Manhattan" experience.

Mind linking me some of those good listings? I spent the last 3 years in the East Village, most apartments there in that price range are subpar by modern day standards. They're going to be obviously converted apartments with absurdly small bedrooms, no living room area, odd layouts, broker's fees (10-15% of the first year's rent), 5th floor walkups, Avenue C, etc. I'm not saying that deals don't exist, but they are very hard to come by.

Here's a StreetEasy search for 2BRs under $3,000 without broker's fees - I'm not tempted to snag any of these: http://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-3000%7Cbeds%3E=2%7...

I'm not too familiar with deep Brooklyn, but I know you can find alright studios there for $1,200/person. I'm just not sure if the tradeoff of increased commute and reduced safety due to living amongst poverty is worth it. But I'd love to be shown otherwise.

Probably they're living near the Hoyt-Schemerhorn station in downtown Brooklyn. The A/C are good, reliable trains that offer a quick commute to a large number of jobs in Lower Manhattan. And it's absolutely in a safe neighborhood.

As for your search, you need to include apartments with broker fees. That's just a reality of the real estate market in NYC. There are many cases where paying the fee is worthwhile.

I'm in the UK and my image of NY is from the Netflix "Daredevil" show.

It amazes me the times I've seen one of the characters, Karen Page (attractive blonde white woman) just part company with another character at night and walk home. The streets look almost deserted except the occaisonal walker and cab. I thought it might be just fiction but another part of me thought that NY might be safer given the strictness of the police, zero-tolerance policy and increasing gentrification.

Whats wrong with a walk up? Stairs certainly aren't unique to NYC. Also what is wrong with old? . Pre-war buildings are actually more desirable as pre-war buildings spared little expenses with both construction and materials. In a pre-war building you will have plaster walls and poured-concrete floors which means much less noise or hearing your neighbor. This is opposed to post war in which you will have sheetrock walls. Pre-war buildings will also get you character like high ceilings, stamped tin ceilings, plate rails, tiled hallways, wood reliefs. Buying an AC unit isn't a big deal, you buy it and have it for 10 years.

Its completely possible to live in a one bedroom that is not a dump for less than $4k a month. There is no absolute minimum as you state. Lastly, "old" does not necessarily imply bad or dumpy. You are correct if you want to live in a brand new one bedroom with all "mod cons" - heated floors, stainless steel appliances, central AC, an Amazon locker etc., it is going to cost you significantly more. But you can also get that experience as you imply just about everywhere else in the world. These places also tend to have less in the way of character. Some people don't want that.

Walkups are fine if you're on the first three floors. I spent 3 years in 5th floor walkups (East Village, Upper West Side, Morningside Heights). You never get used to that.

I guess age itself isn't the issue, it's the quality of the unit, and most old pre-war walkup units have terrible quality by modern standards. Those cool old buildings with "character" you speak of - with the super high ceilings and all that - you're not going to find those in Manhattan (and if you do, they are absurdly expensive). Most of the old buildings in Manhattan are former tenement buildings. None of the 3 walkups I lived in had high ceilings or any of those charms. They were just small, perpetually dirty, had tiny windows facing directly into other buildings, nasty bathrooms, disgusting building common areas, etc. I've lived in prewar and modern buildings, and can't attest to any noise insulation advantages in prewar. If living in a tenement like a poor immigrant from 100 years ago is considered having "character", then I don't want character.

Go outside of NYC, and you realize that most people live in modern buildings with central air and large windows. In NYC, those are a luxury.

Personally the thing I like most about newer buildings are the large floor-to-ceiling windows. The sparse tiny windows in prewar buildings are just depressing (though the prewar unit I lived at in the Upper West Side did have nice windows).

I'm curious where did you end up moving to? It sounds like you found a modern place? Did you move out of the city?

So after I let my 3 year lease expire, I subletted this small but amazing place in Gramercy for one month - 16th floor, doorman, balcony, laundry in basement - for $1,900 all-in (they're paying $2,125/person + utilities, 1BR converted into 2BR, but still a living room area). Didn't want to leave, but had no choice due to the tenant returning. (if you want to see clips of it, I have a Youtube channel in my profile where I post stupid videos)

Now I'm subletting a modern condo (built in 2008) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for $60/night that looks like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fmxqof9kfivrpq2/2016-09-02%2009.16... . 2 bedroom 2 bathroom, just under 1,000 square feet. It's by far the most beautiful apartment I've ever stayed at, but unfortunately my bedroom doesn't have a usable desk - which I've now come to realize is absolutely mandatory. Thus I'm now searching for another sublet under $70/night with a nice desk in the bedroom - and if it's in deep Brooklyn, it better be in a modern renovated apartment. This is actually not as easy to find as I thought.

The main reason I'm subletting is because I want to try out this digital nomad thing, and thus want the flexibility of not being tied down to a lease.

My wife and I live in an enormous 2-bedroom a block from four subway lines, in Long Island City. We pay $2,000/month for that (with various amenities included). A friend of ours who lives a block away with another couple pays $3,000/month for a house with an enormous backyard. And we're not outliers by any means. My point being, if you live in Brooklyn or Queens, and you're willing to do a bit of looking, you can find a perfectly suitable place for far less than the price points you mentioned.

What sort of amenities are included? Is this a walkup?

How did you find your deal, and mind if I ask what building you're in (if it's a high-rise)? I'm actually looking into that area right now, and haven't been able to find any deals like that.

It's a walkup in a pre-war building, not a high-rise. We're on 46th road; we found it through a friend who was giving the place up (it seems like that's a common theme for the better apartments people land). The problem with LIC right now is that those high-rise luxury condos along the water are dominating the rental discussion in the neighborhood; there are definitely deals to be found on the "landward" side of Vernon Blvd, but the closer you get to the water, the worse the rent gets.

My wife and I say that, if we have to move, we'll go deeper along the 7 line into Queens or up into Astoria. That's where the best rent-to-space-ratio seems to be at the moment; LIC still has some good ones, but they're further and fewer between as rich people realize how close we are to Manhattan and move in greater numbers.

Our amenities are very much off-the-books. Nothing like a doorman or in-house gym. We have a super who does everything, a couple of laundry machines in basement, etc. :)

I think its pretty funny that the word 'enormous' is actually being applied to a two-bedroom.

Outside of the cities and expensive suburbs, most people get a 3 bedroom house at a minimum, and people paying $2000 a month will get a 4 or 5 bedroom.

The amount of money it costs to live in NYC compared to somewhere like salt lake or Denver, you could buy a new car every year. There is no chance it's cheaper.

Median rent among my colleagues is around $1.3k. (Most of us live with roommates.)

Median commute time to work (almost none of us live in Manhattan) is about 30-40 minutes. No one owns a car.

I'm lucky to be living alone in Jersey in a $1.2k studio with a 35-minute commute to work. I consider this lucky, but very doable with planning.

How does this compare to rates in, say, the bay area? Or Denver?

In Denver you can live with a roommate in the same conditions as NYC or the bay for maybe $500. The difference between those two is about $700/mo. That car payment will get you an amazing car or a new lower end car every 2 years or so.

But I'd have to use a car to get around. AAA’s 2015 Your Driving Costs study lists the average monthly ownership cost of a car at $725 per month. Plus there's the time cost: I can't read a book in the car, but I could on the train.

> old compared to other world cities

"Not being bombed into rubble" probably comes into play here.

Oh god, those garbage bags. I remember a few winters ago, our street got clobbered on garbage day and giant piles of old garbage bags sat underneath a layer of snow for about a month. When the feet of snow covering the garbage bags finally started to melt we had a nice little bubbling stream of garbage downhill for a few days...

Have they looked into underground garbage storage? I think in Paris (and likely elsewhere) they have large tanks below street level that are raised when trucks need to pick up the refuse.

"They" have not.

Even the underground in Manhattan is crowded. Manhattan is basically an island of very hard, solid metamorphic rock. Most of the city is plenty shot through with tunnels and foundations, and underground car garages.

You could probably ask the sanitation department why they haven't explored these options:

http://www1.nyc.gov/site/dsny/index.page

Please report back, if they ever reply to you.

Also, "terror alert levels" are not a thing, and really haven't been, since like... 2004? And probably only lasted that long, since 2004 was an election year, for "you know who."

I saw it at the Staten Island ferry terminal last week, maybe because it's approaching 9/11? It had a yellow insert and said something like alert level 1.

That combined with the "see something say something" ads does make me feel like terrorism might a real possibility. For my part I've avoided the subway at peak hours. I know it's pretty unlikely, but who knows.

> why are the subways so hot?

I believe the biggest cause is the heat from braking the cars all day. There is no regenerative braking in the system and the older trains have crude speed control so they're constantly braking to scrub speed between stops for curves and work zones. It all gets dumped as heat into the tunnels.

"why are the subways so hot?"

welcome to London...

I used to live in upper west side and some of the delis there looked like retirement homes at times. I loved the diversity of cultures and generations there. Unfortunately, not everyone is wealthy enough to retire there.

Another place where I was surprised to see lots of elderlies (many more than in Manhattan) was Hong Kong. Many retired men hanging out in traditional restaurants.

For the benefit of Non-New-Yorkers:

NYC is a spread of 5 administrative sections called boroughs; Manhattan is the smallest and Queens is the largest (5X landmass of Manhattan). 6X more people live in the 4 outer boroughs when compared to Manhattan.

Posts below, which mention cost, often talk about Manhattan. As you might have guessed, other boroughs tend to be cheaper and are well connected via Subway and MTA bus systems.

More than half of New Yorkers do not own a car (ref below), and even those who own patronise the public transport significantly for their work commute (no data, but personal experience from having lived there many years).

If you remove the car ownership, and strain on time and resources that come from living in the suburbs, living in NYC is cheaper, as long as you don't consider Manhattan alone as NYC.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_(New_York_City) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...

Edit: Typos and population.

Parts of other boroughs might be cheaper but the desirable parts of Brooklyn(Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Williamsburg, etc) and Queens(LIC) aren't any cheaper than Manhattan. There was a time when you could say Brooklyn was cheaper than Manhattan but that hasn't been true in a long time.

I think most people would have very short retirement in Manhattan. They would run out of savings.

Also, fitting most people on a small island is difficult.

Actually, I've always wondered how they manage to pay their bills. Of course, there are tons of super wealthy people in Manhattan, but there are also many elderlies that don't look particularly well-off. I suspect they've owned their apartment for a long time, or that they pay little rent. Maybe they receive social benefits from the city...

Rent control is probably a big part of it.

As imgabe said, a lot of older families (both in age and amount of time living in Manhattan), at least in the Upper West Side, have rent control, are in low income housing, or something similar.

If you ever walk around the Upper West Side, farther away from the park, you'll see a ton big, tall apartment complexes. Huge ones with hundreds of families, if not more. I doubt everyone there makes the mid or high $100ks it takes to rent an apartment there now as a new resident.

Actually, a friend of mine lives in such a building. His building is in very poor condition (various problems such as bed bugs infestation, defective heater...). Most tenants there prefer to keep a low profile and don't complain to the landlord. The rent is not controlled, but pretty low ($600 for a small crappy room with shared bathroom).

It seems most tenants are middle-aged hispanics. No retired people there.

Ah interesting. Yeah, they never looked like nice buildings to me. I always wondered who lived there.

Can someone explain to me, why this exists. How come, as a new resident I need to pay 3x the amount of rent compared to someone who has been there for a while. As a landlord wouldn't I be mad that the going rate is much higher? Can someone explain to me as I've never understood how come this happens or why it is the default. Why not just have free market? Forgive if it's obvious, I would love a lay-mans explanation

Because politics.

Yes, the landlord will be mad, but for every one of them there are dozens of happy tenants.

The tenants getting a preferential rate will live there and vote/lobby to protect the system for generations. The new guy paying 3x probably came from elsewhere, and will return there shortly.

Rent control, as it exists in NYC, is a damper on how fast rent can rise (both when you're in a lease, and during vacancies of a property between tenants), for people and properties whose income/rent are below certain thresholds where the government considers them to be either paying for or capable of paying for luxury apartments.

Rent control lets you have some reasonable expectation that you can plan expenses for more than a single lease term, as well as attempting to limit how much damage to the economics of the surrounding area real estate prices are going to do (it's a commodity that is hard to increase the supply of in any great quantity, and demand far outstrips supply...this probably would eventually stabilize, but it'd be quite messy in between, and probably not in a net positive way for the city).

Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would not go down.

>Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would not go down.

Pretty vapid statement. The ceiling is whatever the arbitrary asking price is for something overlooking central park on the 100th floor of some high rise. Nobody cares about the ceiling.

The question is what does it do to the market price in general for a specific size apartment. It will cause a price decline because so many more apartments will actually be on the market. The current price is where supply is meeting demand so if you increase the supply the price will decline.

Of course it will screw up the people on rent control since they likely won't be able to afford it.

Rent controls, such as those built in to the amount which a landlord can raise the rent per annum, are often specific to the tenant and their lease. Thus when the tenants die or are able to get booted off the lease / kicked out of the apartment (NYC has very pro-tenant housing laws), the apartments go for the market rate and the cycle begins anew.

You can just have free market, but then you get tons of renters who complain about both the high rents and any higher capacity buildings being built nearby, as if there's some simple way to prevent new buildings and to keep rent from going up at the same time.

Renters don't complain about new housing supply. That's owners who think it will impact their property value.

They definitely complain when the new housing supply is a new apartment building next door that ruins their view!

The main reason rent controls exist is so that families are not priced out of their homes. Most low-income families are renters, so without rent control they could see their home of the past few decades become unaffordable. Especially in areas like NYC where the value of land can skyrocket, these long-term residents can easily become the “unfortunate” side effect of all this exciting economic activity. So yes, the landlord would definitely like to be able to sell their units for a higher rate if they could. Without legal protections low-income families can easily lose their homes due to market forces.

Many economists (and intro econ textbooks where this is a very popular example) find that rent controls are destructive and a distortionary influence on the housing market, and you’ve already identified one of the downsides in the increased difficulty for new residents to find a dwelling where rent control exist. However, this approach ignores the human and economic impact of home instability. Joshua Mason, an econ professor at Roosevelt University who studies the effects of rent control, puts it pretty well. "Long-term tenants who contributed to this being a desirable place to live have a legitimate interest in staying in their apartments. If we think that income diverse, stable neighborhoods, where people are not forced to move every few years, [are worth preserving] then we collectively have an interest in stabilizing the neighborhood.”[0]

[0]https://psmag.com/in-defense-of-rent-control-3cb453119116#.k...

Rent control. My great aunt paid something like $180/month for her apartment when she died in 2003. She had lived there since circa 1940 and raised 6 kids in it!

The key is to have a support network so that you can remain in your home. Nursing homes and homecare in NYC are a horror show for a variety of reasons.

Or, I wonder, could their running out of money keep them working (in some small capacity, part-time, etc.)?

And if they keep working in some small way, does that allow them to avoid the rapid decline in life expectancy that normally follows retirement? http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20051020/early-retir...

You're looking down this telescope from the wrong end. It's not that living in Manhattan itself somehow extends your life, it's that only very wealthy people can afford to live in Manhattan -- especially in retirement, when most people are living on a fixed income. And in American society, having great wealth means you also have access to things like high-quality food, great medical care, assistive technologies, all of which are things that really can extend your life.

So if Manhattan suddenly became affordable and hordes of ordinary retirees moved in there, you wouldn't see all those ordinary retirees suddenly start living longer, you'd see the average life expectancy for retired Manhattanites drop as the crappy food and medical care the proles get drag the numbers down.

Article might as well be titled "to live long, be rich"

How they managed to completely overlook the "hidden" confounding of being very wealthy and retiring in Manhattan is rather impressive.

The article isn't making any claims about retiring to Manhattan causing increased lifespan. It isn't even intended as a scientific article at all. I suspect many here only read the headline? It's one man's personal essay on their decision to retire to Manhattan and their enjoyment of it.

[Tl;dr: The use of "long life" in the title (probably not even chosen by the author) is figurative, not literal.]

It's a lifestyle piece, not a societal analysis.

You are forgetting the hundreds of thousands that have a rent controlled/stabilized apartment.

I thought that "hundreds of thousands" living in a rent controlled or stabilized apartment in Manhattan was too high, but came away surprised.

From a 2015 article only a tiny percentage of units are rent-controlled, but around 47% of rental units on the market are rent-stabilized.[1] The problem is that the statistics refer to the entire city (all five boroughs), and may not necessarily be specific to Manhattan itself.

EDIT: Found a Furman Center report from 2011 on rent-regulated units[2]. The key table is on page 2 broken down by borough, where Manhattan rent-regulated units account for 48% of the total rental units. The same table shows a breakdown by neighborhood too.

[1] http://citylimits.org/2015/03/09/nycs-endangered-species-a-r...

[2] http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/HVS_Rent_Stabiliz...

The actual life expectancy in NYC is actually not too bad.

> New York City's life expectancy rate has increased by three years since 2001, far greater than the nationwide increase of nearly 1.8 years over the same period.

https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/life-expectancy-for-new-y...

About this:

"Certain Manhattan neighborhoods (I live in one on the Upper West Side) have already achieved NORC (“naturally occurring retirement community”) status."

I also live on the Upper West Side. What surprises me is that everyone my building appears to be under 40, certainly everyone is under 50. It reminds me of when I lived in Brooklyn. But I expected it in Brooklyn. I didn't expect such a youthful building on the Upper West Side.

Same here, for the most part - but I live in a coop, and I fully expect that 90% of its residents plan on retiring either in their current apartment, or moving to a slightly cheaper place and subletting their current apartment to pay for the rent.

The neighbors across from us bought two units over two decades ago, and joined them. They're a couple with two teenaged kids, and what is almost certainly a 3-bedroom apartment that will likely be paid off by the time the kids go off to college. I envy their awesome position :P

Having lived there, I always thought the same thing. The gotchas though... For one it's a filthy city, really. Noise, light, and air pollution. Piles of older buildings still use heating oil to operate their boilers, the soot gets everywhere. Blow your nose, it comes out gray. But OK, OK, no place is perfect. I think the biggest problem is on what sort of retirement plan does someone move to NYC, Manhattan in particular, and buy or rent a place for maybe 20 years? It's like...um?

Many old people downsize to a condo because:

1. The kids are out and the house is too big for them.

2. They are usually one floor units and have an elevator.

3. They don't have to maintain nearly as many things.

And a place with a metro is good if you can't drive any more.

I get all of the other logistical arguments why Manhattan works well for old people, I've seen that first hand.

But a 1 BR condo in Manhattan is in the $3500-$4000/month range. What sized house is that they're downsizing from? Because if it's in Colorado, that's a 5BR 4000+ square foot house. If it's Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, you've got that on a dozen acres, with a guest house, a barn, and horses, and staff.

Median retirement income in the U.S. is ~$31k per year. So again, they're doing this how? Great idea if you're old and reasonably wealthy. This is not something the typical old fart is going to be doing for retirement.

There has been a concreted effort by the Dept of Health to improve health outcomes beginning in 2001, so we are seeing results. MPOWER is a plan that dramatically reduced tobacco use. There were attempts to lower the consumption of sugar-added-beverages which significantly contributes to obesity. The legal attempts failed, but the publicity of the legal challenges has contributed to a decline. There are many FQHC (Federally Qualified Community Health Centers) here so that essentially everyone has access to care (of course the elderly have Medicare) all of these things help to increase the life expectancy in NYC.

As pointed out by others, this is a mass transit and walking city, often the mass transit is far faster than using one's car or a taxi (depending on the time of day). For a Meetup I was attending a couple of weeks ago, I received an Apple Warning to leave 40 minutes early because of heavy traffic. It took me 15 mins by subway and a short walk.

A number of the apartments are old and the lowest of these buildings are "walk up" eg, no elevator which also leads to lots of exercise to keep one healthy.

My parents are in just now in the process of retiring. They have an apartment in NYC and a house in an expensive suburb in Boston.

One of the reasons why they are going to have to stay in NYC before moving for some time is to continue to make additional money (ironically). They just don't have enough money yet to retire the way they want and/or not ready to retire. They just don't want live in the South despite my some family members urges to.

From visiting NYC and having family live there I would gander that there are three groups of retirees.

1. The super wealthy that probably have another mansion somewhere else and generally were born into money.

2. The rise the corporate ladder but in debt most of their lives 1980's yuppies (not born into money but have the ambition)

3. The never left the city born and raised and probably have family owned businesses/property.

My parents coming from absolutely zero money are from the second group.

After growing up in "privileged" areas in the ugliest smallest house in the neighborhood with working parents I can observationally say it is amazing how many people that are wealthy that can retire that probably didn't really earn their wealth or at least were significantly aided. There are a lot of trust fund retirees all over and there are a lot of retirees that want to retire like them.

I'm not saying I know for sure the author had/has the silver spoon in his mouth and thinks everyone can afford NYC (group 1)... but simple googling of his name certainly paints a picture of that (his father was a medical doctor and he went to Harvard... maybe scholarship but I doubt it).

Do they live longer because they walk around more often in Manhattan?

That's probably part of it. Another factor might be that you can't retire in Manhattan if you're poor.

Maybe because they have fun doing all kind of things that keep them going. I remember a friend of mine whose roommate was 60. She told me that 60 in NYC is like 40 somewhere else.

They live longer because you need money to live in Manhattan, and socioeconomic status is correlated with life expectancy!

That's part of it.

You need to be rich or have a rent-subsidized apartment to retire in Manhattan.

I love Manhattan. I've lived here for 4 years. But I'd never consider retiring here unless I was rich enough to have a nice apartment (minimum $3,000/month for anything decent). Even then I'm not too sure I'd stay here because the little things do wear down on you - the dirty smelly overcrowded streets, subway stations that are as hot as saunas in the summer, ghetto/homeless people everywhere, constant obnoxiously loud sirens, shabby old infrastructure and housing stock, etc.

But I do love the fact that you don't need a car, and there's an energy to this city that I haven't experienced anywhere else. I just don't like when people use this as an excuse to ignore its weaknesses. It's 2016 and most people here live in old tenement buildings.

Amen to that. I live in Astoria so I don't end up spending as much but I am always amazed how many people buy into the greatest-city-on-earth mentality and ignore all the shortcomings.

There are a lot of mentality ill elderly people in NYC, and unfortunately, many seem to be forgotten and left to their own devices. The city can definitely be very taxing on the mind.

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