Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcadam | Hacker News Reader

We recently moved to a large-ish (but not huge) city and since I would be working downtown we looked at becoming urbanites (easy commute, can get rid of one of our cars, proximity to restaurants, shopping, things to do, etc.).

Then we discovered that urban accommodations for a family of 5 do not exist at any price (and small 3bdr apartments can be had but are hard to find and extremely expensive). So, into the suburbs we went. The only people that seem to live in/around downtown here are either young singles (with good jobs, given the costs) or homeless.

Maybe when the kids move out and I'm close to retirement, but then I'd rather live in a shack on/near a beach somewhere, so nah...

View on HN

I lived in the downtown of a major metro for close to two decades. Many of my neighbors vowed to raise urban street smart kids but when the children actually came plans changed. They'd quickly discover their current condo wasn't large enough, so they'd upgrade to something larger. Then transition to a townhouse and eventually a detached single family home, though often inside the city limits. Once they hit school age, things split between those who could afford private school and those who made convoluted excuses as to why the nearby inner city school wasn't appropriate for their child and then move somewhere else. Most often to the suburbs but sometimes to wealthier part of town. I moved away before any of the children became teenagers but it would be interesting to check in and see how things evolve once that happens.

> a detached single family home, though often inside the city limits

Wow, to even have that as a viable upgrade path.

I don't even live on the coast and in my metro, with the local range for a middling middle-class income, having a detached house within the city limits is an absolute pipe dream.

It is weird how a house in Minneapolis has ended up costing more than a comparable house in the Jacksonville, despite the latter having twice the population, being in the tropics, and located on the coast.

Jacksonville is a weird case, because the city limits include a freakishly large area compared to almost every other large city in the US: Jacksonville's city limits span ~875 square miles, vs. ~58 square miles for Minneapolis (and another 56 square miles of St. Paul). Jacksonville essentially includes a huge chunk of its suburbs within the city limits. If you drew an 875 square mile region around the MSP area, you'd find houses that were comparable in cost to the ones you're referencing in Jacksonville.

In Chicago you don't need convoluted excuses to not send your kids to the inner city schools. They are often objectively terrible and violent places.

This is absolutely the case in Metro Vancouver; finding a 3+ bedroom, 2+ bathroom condominium is an almost insurmountable challenge.

The issue, almost entirely, is decades of municipal councils who could not imagine families wanting to live in towers, and so zoning for and approving almost exclusively singles and partnered housing in condos.

Recently, some of the councils have seen the err of their ways and begun approving a small amount of family housing; but it's woefully inadequate.

The mayor of New West himself resorted to buying two adjacent suites and joining them when he couldn't find family housing!

I think your story needs to include the specific city to be judged. Also what do you mean by urbanites? In DC, you can buy a 3 bedroom rowhouse not near downtown but near a subway for ~750K ~ 1M, which is basically the limit of what a two lawyer family can afford. In Baltimore, depending on how big you want your house to be and where, you can spend between 250K and 750K. I'm not as familiar with other markets.

This comment reminded me of a thread I read on r/baltimore a few months back that compared 1M houses in Baltimore and DC, it was pretty striking: https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/aw9476/what_a_mi...

It's a little distorted because even inside the city location changes house quality per dollar a lot. For example, I live next to a million dollar row house in Baltimore… But it's only $1m because it is split into 5 one level apartments, so you can easily rent it out and get your money back. If you were to join it into a house again, you'd lose money.

Then we discovered that urban accommodations for a family of 5 do not exist at any price

I grew up in a large city and had a ton of friends in families of 5+. Their houses still stand today. I live in the same city today and have neighbors with 3 kids. Maybe this is true of the unnamed city you're speaking of, but this is a bad generalization.

> Their houses still stand today

Was this some intensely sprawl-based city like Dallas? Because the only way this seems realistic to me is if by 'house' you mean actual single-family detached housing. And there aren't many highly populated cities that have a lot of that within their municipal borders.

Seattle has tons.

I'm in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and my apartment is a 4-bedroom. Building used to be owner-occupied, now converted to two addresses with two apartments in each plus a shared basement with a single-room fifth apartment, price is astoundingly low for the area because the landlord is just the senior who grew up there, I think the other apartments are all 1-2 bedroom or studio. It might be a bit cramped, but you could rent the entire big apartment and fit four to six kids plus two parents.

Holy hell, how much are you paying for that? I just did a quick look through rental prices in Cambridge and I'm seeing 1000sqft one bedrooms going for $2000/mo and up.

So... okay. Maybe that number of rooms in such an area exists, but it's not exactly something the average working family can even think about affording

I am paying for one-quarter of the 4-bedroom apartment (that is, one bedroom plus shared spaces), which comes in at $950/mo. I am well aware that this is absurdly cheap for the area. Probably part of the discount is from the lack of insulation and also lack of a lease (month-to-month rent, no legally-enforced guarantee that rent won't go up or I won't be kicked out, though the landlord thus far seems like a decent sort and I'm not too worried). I don't know the rate on the other apartments.

There are many buildings of about that size in the neighborhood, though I don't know how they're divided internally, and it would of course be more expensive if you're renting a full house worth. I don't recall the square footage of the apartment.

No to both. I'm talking about row homes located ~3 mi. from City Hall in Philadelphia (which is the center of the city).

Most people given a choice want each kid to have their own bedroom. The kids CAN share, but it is a lot easier when each kid has their own space to escape to.

That's probably a matter of lack of demand, though. In my Southern European city you can find everything from a tiny studio to a 3200sq ft apartment with 5+ bedrooms, right in the middle of the city. Of course, it'll cost you.

In the US it isn't lack of demand it is lack of supply. Yes it will cost, but most cities won't allow you to build such thing, so you can't get 5+ bedrooms at any price.

Eh, people who buy 5+ bedroom apartments in city centres, and the people who build them, are not exactly political outcasts. I'm pretty sure that if there were enough of them, they could nudge the city councils into changing those regulations.

The problem is it is a vicious circle there aren't very many, so nobody has a family in the area, thus the schools are the low income inter city schools that you wouldn't send your kid to, thus nobody with kids would move to such an apartment given a choice. You can hate the suburbs as much as you want, but the type of person who would want a 5 bedroom apartment as a first choice is going to move to the suburbs in the end because none of the benefits of the city are worth sending your kids to bad schools.

We do it but our kids share rooms. The girls are in one room and the boy in the other. They will complain when they’re older but that’s life. Most people aren’t willing to have 5 people in 1050 square feet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com