Comment by andreygrehov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andreygrehov | Hacker News Reader

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I'm originally from Ukraine, Odessa. It indeed brings a lot of memories (mostly from childhood), but I have a slightly different perspective on it. When I moved to New York, ~8 years ago, my budget for rent was around $2,000. I checked 20+ different apartments, worked with a ton of agencies. I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400. I ended up getting a decent studio for abysmal $2,700. I moved to Brooklyn since then and live at a much better place now, but a ton of people still live in conditions, IMO, way worse than the ones shown in the game, paying $2000 a month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400.

Odessa is a city of less than a million people while 8 million are crammed into New York. The more apples-to-apples comparison would be Moscow (12 million).

Plenty of people are willing to trade space for location. They want to be in the center of all the action.

And prices are dropping rapidly as the city empties out because of Covid: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/big-drop-in-manhattan-rental...

Fascinating, when comparing rat-holes New York is the expensive one, Moscow a bit less....it nearly sounds like unlimited communism was not much worse the unlimited capitalism.

Where I live you can get a decent apartment for $600/mo. It may be in a poorer area, relationship issues pop up with your neighbors more often, and homelessness crops up more, the place in of itself is completely acceptable. I've lived in one of these slums too. They're not that bad and in a pinch if you have to, moving there will get the job done.

Sure they do it by choice. You also have the option to live somewhere else though

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