And it's 100% down to real estate and developers (the land kind). They're ruining our city and turning it into a Disneyland for the megarich.
Why would a builder put immense fuss and effort and stress into making a hundred brand new low income homes that will be a pain and suck to get sold and won't be able to charge much for because low income when they can build one mcmansion and be set for like ten years with a good client who will accept a 400% markup because they haven't understood what a dollar is worth in a decade?
If "suppliers" means "existing homeowners and landlords", then sure.
If "suppliers" means "developers building new real estate", then your assertion is blatantly false. Developers have a financial incentive to build and sell as many units as possible. And in practice they are lobbying to build as much as possible, but are running into problems:
* environmental reviews a.k.a. bored busybodies' legal right to oppose anything being built anywhere and delay your project for years
* regulations limiting how many units can be built on a given lot (height limits, parking minimums, zones prohibiting multifamily buildings)
* regulations making construction unnecessarily expensive (e.g. NYC regulations making it prohibitively expensive for most projects to operate a construction crane)
* racist local politicians who fight tooth and nail against any new units in their neighborhood because then people with the wrong skin color might move in (this applies to local politicians of all skin colors; e.g. see https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/03/03/har...).
They earn money by exploiting the scarcity of an essential need.
They are purely benefitting the rich at the expense of everyone else.
At least they didn't. The past couple years they built like three new giant apartment complexes in the city. They all list for 3x the local average rent. They aren't for residents, they are for rich tourists.
Sounds like your landlord actually lives rent-free, in your head at least.
Most of the rest of the buildings in my city that house people are shitty 1920s homes that are rented out by small time landlords, complexes intentionally or otherwise meant exclusively for section 8 housing, or literal old age homes. It's more profitable FYI for a builder to erect a giant, luxury old age home right on the most busy street rather than build ANY actual housing, because the state pays them $10k a month to house you at the end of their life, and they pay a nurse $50k a year to look after thirty people a day.
As as New Yorker with a rent stabilized lease[0], I pay about half in rent what my neighbors do.
Even so, my monthly nut (rent/utilities/ISP/etc., not counting food and other consumables) is ~$4,000.
I could probably cut that to $3,500 or so if I wanted, but not much less.
Add in food, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc. and I'm easily at $4,750-$5000 a month.
That number doesn't include clothing, laundry, hair cuts, doctor visits, transportation and some other stuff, so it's actually a bit higher.
But let's just work with $5,000/month for the moment. That's $60,000/annum net income that's required. As a ballpark (counting FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes), a minimum gross salary of $95,000-$100,000 is required to support that.
But that's just basic necessities. And don't forget, I pay ~1/2 what my neighbors do in rent. So for other folks it's even more onerous.
There certainly are less expensive places to live in NYC, but with my stabilized lease, not so much less expensive for a comparable place, even in the outer boroughs.
So let's assume a single person making minimum wage (in NY, that's $15/hour) and actually able to get 40 hours of work per week.
That's $600/week or $31,200/annum gross pay. Which, including FICA, NYC, NYS and Federal taxes, comes out to ~26%. Meaning net pay is ~$23,000/annum or ~$1,900/month.
According to most recommendations, one shouldn't spend more than 30% of net income on housing. For a minimum wage worker in NYC, that's about $600/month.
And since the median rent in NYC is $3,395/month, a minimum wage worker would need at least two roommates to afford such an apartment and still be paying ~50% of their income on rent.
Yes, half the rentals are less than that. And half are more.
So yes, people can survive on minimum wage and would still be tight making the national median[1] income (~$70,000/annum in 2021).
But even at the US Median income, it's not a "Living Wage" which implies the ability to meet your immediate needs and have a least a small surplus.
So it should come as no surprise that the median income for a single person in NYC is ~93,000, some three times minimum wage.
What does all this say? That NYC is very expensive (housing is the biggest issue) and even those making $100,000/annum are likely to need to make tradeoffs. And someone making minimum wage ($31,200/annum) or even the national median income (~$70,000/annum) will have trouble making ends meet.
[0] https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/...
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...
[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/area-m...
I didn't say my rent was $4,000 a month. I said my monthly nut (rent, utilities, insurance, ISP, excluding food, clothing, transportation, medical expenses, etc., etc., etc.) was ~$4,000/month.
My place is significantly smaller than a double-wide trailer. And my rent bill is my business and that of my landlord.[0]
Have a good day!
[0] Since rent stabilized leases have an upper limit to the rent charged to remain rent stabilized, you can get an upper limit to that with a little research. Good luck.
Edit: Added additional info about my rent.
My renter's insurance is ~$100/year. The bigger issue (for me at least) is the ~$1,000/month (plus $600 deductible and $40 copays) I pay for crappy health insurance.
> I pay about half in rent what my neighbors do.
I assumed that most of your $4,000 a month was going towards rent, which would mean your neighbors are paying close to $8,000 a month. That's a very large number so I asked about that.
This was apparently wrong enough for you to want to correct me (without saying what your neighbors actually pay). That made me then try to understand if you have really high fees. This also doesn't seem to be the case.
I'll clarify. Again. The rent on most of the apartments in my building is ~2x what I pay in rent. One of a trio sharing an apartment pays less for rent (rather, mommy and daddy do) than I do for rent.
I have other expenses as well.
I don't give lots of detail because I'm not interested in publishing my budget online. If that perturbs you, my apologies.