NYC Hacker Collective: Revenge of the Nerds
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Me too!
Looks about 50/50
I still hear "hacker" used a lot in a third sense, too, meaning "bad programmer" - not a criminal, just someone who does a hack job. Perhaps this meaning goes back to "hack" as applied to writers (churning out slop for money). That usage goes back to hackney carriages and hired horses.
Edit: dictionary.com (yes, I'm ashamed) has only the positive meaning for hack:
7. Computers. to devise or modify (a computer program), usually skillfully.
... and gives the positive meaning priority for hacker:
3. Computer Slang. a. a computer enthusiast. b. a microcomputer user who attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems.
Those are pretty cool signs.
Also, if you are in D.C, check out HacDC, a hacker collective in D.C. (http://hacdc.org/). I've never been, but read about them in 2600. They seem pretty cool.
Of course, we're talking about reason and efficiency with regard to New York residential issues, so the aforementioned "if" is a big one. If landlords are short-sighted and greedy enough to keep rents high while accepting a vacancy rate, the talent will flush out of here before New York has the opportunity to establish itself as a tech hub... and then it's only a matter of time before we're back in the '70s.
Rent-stabilized means that an apartment's rent can't increase faster than the rate of inflation, plus a certain margin (1-2% per year, I believe). The purpose of this is to remove the volatility in rents that causes urban centers to rot. When rents are volatile, it's bad for residential infrastructure on both the up and down swings. When rents are high, as in 2007 New York, landlords don't need to do shit to move properties, so they let them decline. When rents are low, there's no point in improving the housing. This is why a lot of urban centers crumbled in the 1950s.
Rent control was instituted in the 1940s to prevent GIs from coming back to unaffordable rents. For rent-controlled (unlike rent-stabilized) apartments, the landlord cannot raise the rent at all (meaning he takes a loss equal to the rate of inflation).
Rent stabilization is a good thing and should be extended. Rent control was a huge mistake and should probably be abolished.
One thing that happens in non-RS buildings in New York (the new-construction "luxury" buildings) is that landlords routinely hit tenants with 10-20% rent increases, regardless of the direction of the market. The reason for this is that they know people hate moving, especially in New York where most people don't have cars, and Wall Streeters are (were) getting 25-50% raises each year, so they would take the pain.
If rents are decreased on a rent-stabilized building, I don't think it's easy to bring them back up, but this is probably better than carrying a vacancy.
I've heard that RC goes out the window if there's a 5% vacancy rate, but that could be an urban myth. It's getting close to that point right now.
SV and California in general are hardly rent friendly