N.Y.C. so costly you need to earn six figures to make middle class

BY Elizabeth Hays

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


More than $2,000 a month for day care. Some of the highest phone bills in the country. Jam-packed, 50-plus-minute commutes to work.

You knew it was tough to live in New York City — but this tough?

A new report shows just how ugly — and expensive — New York City can be, especially for the middle class, squeezed by skyrocketing living costs and stagnant wages.

The study, released Thursday by the Center for an Urban Future, shows that New York City is hands-down the most expensive place to live in the country.

Among the findings:
• A New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston.
• In Manhattan, a $60,000 salary is equivalent to someone making $26,092 in Atlanta.
• You knew it was expensive to live in Manhattan, but Queens? The report tagged Queens the fifth most expensive urban area in the country.
• The average monthly rent in New York is $2,801, 53% higher than San Francisco, the second most expensive city in the country.
“Income levels that would enable a very comfortable lifestyle in other locales barely suffice to provide the basics in New York City,” the report concludes.
Other belt-tightening details include:
• New Yorkers paid about $34 a month for phone service in 2006. In San Francisco, similar service cost $17 a month.
• Home heating costs have jumped 125% in the past five years and are up 243% since 1998.
• Full-time day care costs can run up to $25,000 a year for one child, depending on the neighborhood, or about as much as some college tuitions.
• Meanwhile, wages in the city have remained mostly flat in all boroughs but Manhattan — even during the boom years from 2003 to 2007.

It’s not only money that makes life here hard, researchers said — which might not be news to most New Yorkers.

Take commutes, for example. The report found that many New Yorkers put up with commutes double the national average of 25.5 minutes.

Commuting to Manhattan from St. Albans, Queens, can take 51.7 minutes, while getting there from Canarsie, Brooklyn, can run 50.8 minutes.

Researchers said the combination of skyrocketing costs, stagnant wages and a deteriorating quality of life forced hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to flee the city for cheaper areas during the boom years from 2002 to 2006.

The report found that more New Yorkers left each year during the boom than left during the dark days of the early 1990s.

Center for Urban Future Director Jonathan Bowles noted that the number of people fleeing the city has slowed since 2007 as the rest of the country has sunk into recession, jobs have dried up nationwide and home values here started to sink.
Mayor Bloomberg downplayed the report but said he is concerned about the constant drumbeat of job losses in the city.

“There is turnover all the time. That’s very healthy,” Bloomberg said. “We’re doing fine, but it is very worrisome, the number of people who are losing their jobs.”

ehays@nydailynews.com

With Adam Lisberg

Rage Against the Roaches

Ugh, I can’t even stand to look at that picture. Roaches, they make me so sick, (funny cause I love earthworms so much).

I guess I had an early education on Roaches. My Dad found one in our kitchen in the town house once, went crazy. Put in a glass jar and held in under each of my four sibling’s noses and made us give the dead thing a real good look, then he told us how dirty they are, and how they poop on everything and can make us sick. Well as a child just learning about bacteria and thinking how dirty poop was at that age, (poopface and buttheads being the biggest insults I knew at the time) I was pretty freaked out.

That was the one and only time I ever saw a cockroach growing up (as we have established, I’ve lived a very shelter life). Imagine my surprise when I moved up to the Big Apple, HA, it’s like cockroaches on steroids up here.

I was innocently in the shower when I spied my first one, I haven’t been able to sing ABBA in the shower since, what was a line from Dancing Queen quickly turned into me dancing and screaming. I got a pretty good look at the little bugger before he became mush on the bottom of the shampoo container. Still in my towel I jumped on to Google what the F**K it was. Turns out my apartment building has German Cockroaches (view the ugly shit; he’s the third from the left.)

It was then that I realized that all the gooey brown stuff I’d been peeling up from the corners of EVERYWHERE was what I now fondly refer to as Strategy 1 – Roach Gel. (I don’t know if you can imagine my disgust, it was intense let me tell you).

I immediately went on the rampage. You see I thought we had roaches in my apartment because my apartment was dirty (oh so sheltered…). So I went positively crazy between writing cover letters with the Lysol Cleaner. I swear, this place hasn’t been cleaner since 1944. I did more research, I made sure there was no standing water anywhere, I took all the food in the cabinet and put it in gallon size ziplock bags, and for good measure I washed all the dishes over again (didn’t want to be eating of dishes where poopy roach feet had marched).

It was about a month till I saw my next roach, I still shudder to think about it. Again I was in the bathroom, innocently brushing my teeth when I looked in the mirror and saw a little creeper watching me from the ceiling. This time my boyfriend was home, I called him in screeching like a banshee the whole way. I saw him trying to make his escape back up the steam-heating-pipe. And that’s when I figured it out. Roaches don’t pop out of midair because your place isn’t clean, I apparently don’t have clean neighbors.

Again, I went on a rampage. This is when I discovered what I now refer to as Strategy 2 and 3. Armed with my Roach Gel Pistol, I shot up all the holes I could find in the apartment that might lead to other apartments. Oh the plethora of holes I found, it pisses me off even now, the holes in the top of the steam-heating-pipes were the first to be plugged, where the shower taps meet the tile, holes there too, cracks where the floor doesn’t meet the wall, were the counter doesn’t meet the wall, you name it, if it’s a hole, roaches can get in it and in to my apartment. Strategy 3 was actually my boyfriend’s contribution. He bought little roach hotels, (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little) and he put them all over the apartment.

Its all out war here, a full on assault against these creepy creatures; I won’t rest until I feel safe.

…..I’d so rather live with earthworms….

So…. I lost my job yesterday

It’s no secret; the job market sucks everywhere these days. But no where does it suck more than NYC. With the financial center of the world laying off people faster than you can say “how far was the stock market down today,” things have been tough here in Manhattan. I read today, and I really should stop reading these things, that jobs for people with BA’s are down 40% since the end of 2007. EGATS!

I was in the office on Thursday, red eyes everywhere. I thought my job was safe, or hoped it was. But I got the call Monday from my temp agency, it’s a no go, what was three months of work, flushed rather shittly down the toilet of joblessness.

I’ve been searching for a job since I arrived here in July 2008. I wasn’t in a hurry when I arrived, thinking I had a few weeks to get things screwed on straight. But then August hit and things started to look grim down on Wall Street. By September, it was like the depression was happening all over again. I saw my first job fair line, (poor little me, it took several bars of chocolate and some high carb. pasta to over come the shock of that), that line was two short blocks and one long block long. I followed to the end of it just to see how long it was. And what really floored me was the verity of people in the line. Young, old, smartly dressed, down-right-slobs, men, women, White, Black, Hispanic, Asians, mercy just about everyone… It was down right discouraging.

The past few months have been a trial of perseverance. Of having something then losing it, of getting somewhere only to have the rug yanked from underneath you. As I said one day in my facebook status, “Sucks eggs”. There have been days of writing cover letters and sending them out only to have no response, there have been days of doing crappy temp jobs, really great temp jobs, being called at 6:30am by some inconsiderate woman who wants you to go to work on a job for her in less than 45 minutes and there have been interviews I thought were in the bag, only to get the form email rejection the next day with out explanation. It’s like a game board, take two steps forward and three back.

The worm in this apple? There isn’t enough apple for all the worms in NYC.

Homelessness Too Close To HOME

Most neighborhoods have a crazy cat lady, or their own Boo Bradley or at least someone who doesn’t like their petunias trampled. But I’ve had no such like finding a neighbor like these (let alone a single petunia); instead we have our neighborhood homeless man.

When I first saw him he was shuffling along the sidewalk wearing truly tattered cloths, mumbling nonsense under his breath and smoking a cigarette. Being a newbie to the city, I was shocked. Call me sheltered, cause I was. I’d written papers in college on the homeless problem down in DC, the epidemic of homeless Vietnam veterans who make our nations capital home. But I wasn’t prepared to deal with homelessness on my own city block. I felt awful for the man, but I also felt very afraid.

It’s been months since then and the weather has turned cold. He’s still out there, circling the block. I’ve seen him at least once every other day since that first day I saw him. He’s always in the same cloths. He smells like a landfill. He’s always either shuffling along or sleeping in a pile on the sidewalk.

I’ve contemplated giving him money or food or for god sakes a blanket, but I’m terrified of him, and frankly my boyfriend tells me to stay the hell away from him. I feel awful for him, but I don’t want to “make friends.” He isn’t a sweet stray cat I can leave a can of tuna out for. He’s a deeply troubled, 6 foot tall, over 50 man who hasn’t showered in months and as I’ve mentioned he scares the hell out of me.

Last month, my boyfriend went to withdraw some money from a bank down the street. As he walked into the card-entry lobby, the man was sleeping in the corner surrounded by trash. He said the entire place smelled awful and patron’s we clearly distressed to have him sleeping in the lobby area.

Last night the man was sleeping in the doorway to my building. His body was right across the door, making it so you would have to step over him to get by, and impossible if you had to wheel your cart outside, say if you had laundry (like I did). I was freaked out (showing my sheltered roots again aren’t I). After about an hour, our superintendent came home from dinner with his family and asked the man to leave. Our Super then got out a mop and some extra strength Pinesol to clean out the lobby of our building, because the smell was atrocious.

I was left thinking to myself: This was too close to home. You know how there used to be a sine, not in my back yard? You can dump your trash in a landfill, as long as that landfill isn’t anywhere near me? This was in my backyard and I didn’t like it. But I don’t know what to do about it.

I know a lot of people believe in political correctness, but I don’t. Even so I find it hard to describe my feelings towards this homeless man. I feel awful for him, he obviously needs help. But I also feel afraid of him, as a woman who walks home at night (and watches to many crime shows). I know as a human being he has the right to be, but as a person who pays over 1400 a month in rent, does he have to be in my doorway? I know there aren’t laws that say you have to shower and not smell really really bad. But he really stinks! I’m floored as to what to do. Nothing in life prepared me for this.

But this is NYC, very little prepared me to live here at all.

The Glory of the Big Apple, may not be so Glorious

Greetings, Lady Annelid here, Anne for short, yup that's right Lady of the worms.

We've all seen them, those shirts that say I love NYC, well I'm not of that frame of mind. I moved to NYC recently and as a girl who, shall we say appreciates her earth worms, NYC isn't all its cracked up to be.

Forgive me for sounding a bit angry but I'm really sick of friends and family asking me if I've gone to see "insert tourist attraction here." I'm sorry, I LIVE HERE. I don't have time to go out and see the Statue of Liberty, or the Rockafeller Center X-mas tree!

Life here isn't one big party all the time.

Life here isn't one big vacation get away, every day.

New York City has a side to it most tourist refuse to see.

I'm living in NYC.

I'm not a tourist.

I'm struggling to cope.

And though this blog is an outlet for my frustration, I hope it will also be funny, cynical and true to the life I live here.

Because I'm trying everyday to get through situations that most people where I'm from would be shocked at.

I am the Lady of the Earthworms.

And this big apple is full of Worms!

Photo by Doug Wilson, USDA/ARS