Comment by oldnetguy
4 hours ago
I know people making less than that but they are getting subsidies. It's people who are not poor enough for subsidies and not affluent that is getting squeezed
4 hours ago
I know people making less than that but they are getting subsidies. It's people who are not poor enough for subsidies and not affluent that is getting squeezed
Hard agree. Cant even qualify for housing connect, medicaid, or food stamps - income tax credits (single / no kids / no property) - which are significant help to quality of life.
I'm outside of NYC, still in NY. As a single person, the 80% AGI limit is $49,000 here.
It's actually kind of painful to be barely above 100% AGI and not be able to get secure 'quality' housing up here. Everything that's being rehabilitated is focusing on low income (sub-80% AGI) limits, and everything else up here is... dire to rent. We have no real protections or anything in place up here, let alone an attempt to register rental properties that can go through without landlord revolt.
And tax credits - that was amazing when I filed my taxes through NY's direct file during the IRS pilot. I was given a "great news!" screen where it boasted that I qualified for exactly $0 for every single tax credit on offer because I couldn't own property or have a family.
Yes. People in the middle are always squeezed the hardest, and $125k is just the baseline and is below survival in NYC.
You have to cut on almost everything to keep most of that money every month. Might be fine for those without families, but for a typical family of 2 or 3 would need double that salary and employers will look at that cost and will scrutinize that and ask:
"How do we get that 'cost' (you) significantly reduced?"
That is even before talking about "AGI" which is actually an excuse for layoffs (and reposting old jobs at a lower salary and off shoring those jobs) in disguise.
So it is more like the middle-class and especially families are getting squeezed the most in NYC and have no choice but to leave the US.
[flagged]
Sure, there are lots of other places to live in the US that are cheaper. But if you want to live in a true major urban city, the US has managed to produce exactly one of those, with maybe an argument for Chicago followed by a few very distant also rans, despite our size and wealth and the obvious appeal to many people.
As a result, NYC like living is basically out of reach for the majority of the people who might otherwise want it. Nothing against Indiana, but if what you're looking for is bustling megalopolis living, I don't think Indianapolis is going to cut it. And your choices in the US aside from NYC are very limited.
> Or like. Don’t live in the 2nd most expensive city in the country?
Well... multiple things here.
If you're in, say, finance, you can't just go and move to some flyover state and work remotely. You need to be around NYC (US), LON (UK) or FRA (EU).
If you work some service job, say you work retail, okay. But... imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
It is vitally important for any city to have enough adequate housing for all levels of income, otherwise it falls apart.
4 replies →
Many working-class families in NYC have several "welfare kings/queens" who have little or no income, claiming huge benefits packages from the city, and a few people with $150-300k/year union jobs who buy the luxury goods for the whole clan. The necessities for the high-earners are generally also covered by those benefits packages in the form of shared meals and housing. As a result, everyone in the group lives a pretty middle-class life despite most of the clan being poor on paper. As far as I can tell, this is how a lot of the New York working class survives.
Not even an LLM could hallucinate this.
take your asshole misinformation talking points back to 2005 please. they're not relevant or welcomed here
You have no idea what you're talking about
I dated someone in one of these families for a very long time, so I'm pretty sure I do know how that family system and the surrounding community operates. This sort of "family commune" living arrangement is very common in lower-income communities with family-oriented cultures (eg working-class hispanic, italian, african american communities), and the tax code amplifies its effectiveness.