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Map: Living Alone In NYC Is Increasingly Out Of Reach
By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 8, 2015
Modified Sep 8, 2015
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 8, 2015
Modified Sep 8, 2015
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Most of us have already come to terms with the fact that we'll never live alone in New York City, and will instead share milk, eggs and toilet paper forever in a dorm-like purgatory.
For those who still need convincing, a new dream-deflating map spells out how much money one would have to make in order to afford the median rent in any given neighborhood across the five boroughs. We're talking $41.19/hr in Greenpoint, and $32.08/hr in Hamilton Heights. $79.93/hr in Tribeca isn't all that surprising (nobody who lives in Tribeca is thinking in terms of their hourly anyway, right?), but how about $26.47/hr in Coney Island and $30.02/hr in Howard Beach? (For the purposes of this study, 'median rent' lumps together all types and sizes of apartments, and is forecasted for 2015 as a whole, based off of historical month-to-month rent increases.)
Not a single neighborhood on the map is feasible for workers who earn the city's current minimum wage of $8.75/hr, and only a sprinkling of them—Throgs Neck in the Bronx, New Dorp in Staten Island, Woodstock, Fordham, and Far Rockaway—offer median rents accessible for those earning within two dollars of $15/hr.
A StreetEasy spokeswoman put it this way: "To combat this rent burden, getting roommates, another job, or moving out of the city are the most immediate options for lower wage workers." For all of the NYC masochists out there who don't work in finance, here's our most recent attempt at justifying this overpriced urban existence.
[h/t StreetEasy]
Tagged
Median Rent
real estate
rich people
there's always buffalo
Emma Whitford
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