New York is infamous for being a tough place to live. It used to be crime that was the problem. It’s now unaffordability. NYC has done the world no favors with the exponential rise in rents, which have turned into a global plague.
As usual, if someone comes up with a moneymaking thing in the States, the world follows suit. Uncontrolled rent rises have been catastrophic for housing worldwide. People are now broke due to these huge increased costs, whether they make enough money or not.
NYC doesn’t like Mamdani’s idea for a rent freeze. That should get a dry wheezing cough out of NYC residents and Americans in general, who are saddled with a mix of increased rents and America’s other bad habit of increased property taxes.
It’s a negative return, anyway you look at it:
You’re not paying for a better place, improvements or anything else. You’re paying that much extra money for the same dump.
Added costs are driving more added costs.
The additional property taxes don’t seem to do much in physical terms, and people are being driven out of their homes by them. Who’s better off as a result of more property taxes?
Less cash = less trade on Main Street. Nobody can win.
There is nothing sustainable, even theoretically, about these price structures. There’s no foundation. They’re based on inflated numbers, causing more inflation.
This is a classic case of costs flying in the face of reality. America’s brutal real estate market is drying up cash. Years ago, Pew Research found that most households are $400 away from an unmanageable situation.
In a culture where even normal conversation is expected to include references to millions or billions, America has gotten far too casual about real costs.
Ironically, NYC vacancy rates are low, cited as 1.4%, even with these absurd prices. It reads like renters are hanging on with their nasal hairs. 50,000 NYC apartments are vacant because “their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations.” Nobody thinks there’s something wrong with that?
Meanwhile, the other totally unnecessary mess, food prices, is another big problem. Mamdani wants city-owned groceries to try to manage rampant prices.
This is supposedly a “leftist” idea. Nowhere else in the world would it be considered anything but common sense. There’s nothing democratic about price gouging. Capitalism is supposed to work.
That said, these “socialist” groceries could put a baseline cost on essentials, which would take some of the pain out of shopping for New Yorkers. At most, it could maintain a basic food supply in one of the world’s richest cities.
The big picture is unbelievable stupidity. Who wants to hold a portfolio of massive liabilities in a city that can’t afford itself? The only noticeable message is “move to New York and go broke”.
Whether or not anyone gets the idea that people need to be able to afford to eat and have somewhere to live may or may not be understood.
Whether anyone understands that housing has become “healthcare v.2.0” is debatable.
The Titanic at least had an iceberg to blame. This is about paying the iceberg for sinking the ship.
America is pricing itself out of America in plain sight.
_____________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
