The myth of low cost to live in PGH (Pittsburgh: apartment complexes, rentals)

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Originally Posted by zman63

Occupational Employment and Wages in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh falls 3 percent behind the average national wages.

Computer and Mathematical: -12% below the national average

Oof, I've felt that pain my entire career. Can't help but feel this is due in part of the massive permatemp culture in the technology field within the city. So much for being a city where people flock to fill tech jobs.

[zman63]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

Computer and Mathematical: -12% below the national average

Oof, I've felt that pain my entire career. Can't help but feel this is due in part of the massive permatemp culture in the technology field within the city. So much for being a city where people flock to fill tech jobs.

The numbers are sobering. The engineering and financial numbers are not flattering either. Its going to be hard to retain the young professionals.

[wanderlust76]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

Computer and Mathematical: -12% below the national average

Oof, I've felt that pain my entire career. Can't help but feel this is due in part of the massive permatemp culture in the technology field within the city. So much for being a city where people flock to fill tech jobs.

Don't know about permatemp but there's definitely a long term temp culture and it seems like the turnover rate is high at a lot of companies. It's not just the IT field trust me. BNY Mellon uses like 6 different employment agencies for the same $12.00/hr position and this same job will be posted every other month. I notice these things because I still get email blasts from them and random recruiters from agencies calling me over the years.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

Originally Posted by wanderlust76

Don't know about permatemp but there's definitely a long term temp culture and it seems like the turnover rate is high at a lot of companies. It's not just the IT field trust me. BNY Mellon uses like 6 different employment agencies for the same $12.00/hr position and this same job will be posted every other month. I notice these things because I still get email blasts from them and random recruiters from agencies calling me over the years.

Permatemp and long term temp are pretty much the same thing, just semantics. I'm sure it exists well outside of the technology field too, it is a problem nationwide where getting a "real" job is becoming more and more scarce (especially for young people). I too still get constant emails from recruiters I've dealt with 3 or more years ago for jobs that are "6 month contract with potential to hire" with a going rate of 40k with no vacation or benefits. I'm good.

A lot of people in this country (including many on this forum) don't even know this kind of problem exists and will think any sort of job growth is good job growth. In reality there are thousands of people getting hung out to dry for working conditions that would be laughed at by the rest of the first world. While this is not a Pittsburgh only problem it does exists on a massive scale here to the point where it's a serious problem.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by ctoocheck

Really? I can't imagine Pittsburghers (or most people) saying, "Oh, it's so cheap, come move here!". On the other hand, a number of rankings and such over the past few years have told of Pgh's relatively low cost of living. I imagine these must be based on some numbers somewhere. Perhaps they're based on metro averages, not your particular neighborhoods of interest. And perhaps this has changed recently. Who knows. I can't see how being inexpensive is supposed to portray vitality.

You haven't been on this forum much, have you?

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

A lot of people in this country (including many on this forum) don't even know this kind of problem exists and will think any sort of job growth is good job growth. In reality there are thousands of people getting hung out to dry for working conditions that would be laughed at by the rest of the first world. While this is not a Pittsburgh only problem it does exists on a massive scale here to the point where it's a serious problem.

^ Yep. Add my partner, with his high I.Q. and two Bachelor's Degrees, to the list of "prolonged permatemps". Why hire an employee for $20/hr. and pay them benefits when you can utilize a staffing agency that will supply someone for $12/hr.? You pay the staffing agency either a flat "finder's fee" per worker referred or a fixed monthly fee, enabling the staffing agency to be profitable, while the worker himself/herself is underpaid and not offered benefits, maximizing your own profitability. "Job growth" post-recession has largely been (not just in Pittsburgh, mind you) anemic in terms of wages and benefits compared to the pre-recession positions they are replacing. After a while the big dogs lure we underling lemmings into the false sense of security of "being grateful we have a job---any job" while earning themselves record profits.

The vast majority of my college-educated friends here are underemployed. While people on this sub-forum prance around happily touting how amazingly intellectually-enriched and educated we are compared to nearly every other city they fail to comprehend that while nearly everyone is also employed most are UNDERemployed---earning wages and benefits that are below-average and will not help them to keep pace with the rising local cost-of-living in the coming years. Neither my partner nor I have benefits. I have the advantage of earning enough in terms of compensation to live comfortably (while being uninsured, mind you), but come 2014 when it's mandatory to obtain health insurance those of us younger people who don't have the option of health coverage through our employers face the largest financial whammy of any demographic---paying sky-high premiums while utilizing little, if any, of the benefits, in order to subsidize older Americans. When I have to pay several hundred dollars out of pocket per month for health insurance guess what I'm scaling back on? My local discretionary spending. The businesses that once relied on that spending are going to suffer, and more jobs will be lost.

It's truly a vicious cycle.

Also, I strongly disagree that you need to be experiencing steady income growth to be experiencing steady housing cost inflation. During their "bubble" years housing prices in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas skyrocketed to unattainable levels---far beyond wage growth---which is what led to their crashes. Pittsburgh has been experiencing neither steady population nor income growth, yet we've been experiencing steady housing cost growth. Why? We have a housing shortage. Supply vs. demand DOES explain why our median rents have been skyrocketing. My own rent has increased from $550/month in 2010 to $700/month in 2013 (with an anticipated increase soon) due to the supply vs. demand issue here in the city. As far as telling people who are being priced out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification to "move further away" is concerned did it ever occur to anyone that low-wage workers are the least capable of increasing their commute times? Make it difficult enough for low-wage workers, and businesses that depend upon them (basically every service-oriented establishment) will have a much more difficult time recruiting.

[hinsey86]

Maybe you all underpaid city folks need to venture to the burbs to work.

When we moved here from Seattle 6 years ago I took a job in the city making a couple thousand more than what i did in Seattle. Dh took a suburb job and within 2 years was making nearly double what he did. Now 6 years post move he makes well over double. And his military retirement pay is not taxed in PA. Of course we defected Pittsburgh for the north hills, then Allegheny County for Beaver. All his immediate family ( mixture of burb and city dwellers/workers) have climbed the economic ladder too..including his youngest nephew who is an engineer and working for a local start up company. His wife has worked up to a vice presidency of an engineering firm in the last 6 years post college graduation. None of these successes were do to having ties but simply hard work. And they all paid their dues with entry level jobs initially. I on the other hand went from full time therapist to full time gardener...unpaid. But I am a well kept woman!

I guess we are all anomalies. I'll take it!

[eschaton]

IMHO housing prices are still cheap here, when you consider that many of the transplants from elsewhere who move to the popular city neighborhoods are coming from higher-cost cities/metros. Philadelphia is the only major Northeast Corridor city that you can still buy a house in a non-ghetto neighborhood for under $200,000 (although there's only a few such neighborhoods left). You can't do that anymore even in second-tier East Coast cities like Baltimore, Providence, or Springfield.

If you grew up here, it might not look cheap anymore to you. But you aren't who the housing is being marketed to. This can be seen with the number of transplant threads where people start off with what would generally be seen as a very generous budget here. As long as those people are still being attracted, there is no housing problem. People were never going to migrate en-masse here from somewhere like Atlanta anyway, where you can find an exurban vinyl-sided POS 2 hours out from the city for $100,000. But people like my newest neighbor, who is in software development, used to live in Seattle, and now telecommutes - for him it seems like a fantastic deal.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by eschaton

IMHO housing prices are still cheap here, when you consider that many of the transplants from elsewhere who move to the popular city neighborhoods are coming from higher-cost cities/metros. Philadelphia is the only major Northeast Corridor city that you can still buy a house in a non-ghetto neighborhood for under $200,000 (although there's only a few such neighborhoods left). You can't do that anymore even in second-tier East Coast cities like Baltimore, Providence, or Springfield.

If you grew up here, it might not look cheap anymore to you. But you aren't who the housing is being marketed to. This can be seen with the number of transplant threads where people start off with what would generally be seen as a very generous budget here. As long as those people are still being attracted, there is no housing problem. People were never going to migrate en-masse here from somewhere like Atlanta anyway, where you can find an exurban vinyl-sided POS 2 hours out from the city for $100,000. But people like my newest neighbor, who is in software development, used to live in Seattle, and now telecommutes - for him it seems like a fantastic deal.

With 80+% of Pittsburgh residents born in state (another thread) you can be sure the people who grew up in Pgh ARE the people the homes are being marketed to. You need to get out a little more if you think Pittsburgh is teeming with transplants.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Katiana

With 80+% of Pittsburgh residents born in state (another thread) you can be sure the people who grew up in Pgh ARE the people the homes are being marketed to. You need to get out a little more if you think Pittsburgh is teeming with transplants.

Wherever I go in my neighborhood, when I ask someone under 40 who is obviously not working class (or a college student/recent grad) where they are from, they are seldom from Pittsburgh. I have neighbors who moved here from Seattle, the Bay Area, Brooklyn, DC, Wisconsin, Tennessee, etc. The $400,000 townhouses they are building down the block from me are also not being built with current residents of the region in mind. For that matter, there's no way that high-rent apartment building like the Cork Factory, or the Highland building, are for locals. Locals scoff at the prices, but vacancies there are really rare.

Basically, Pittsburgh seems to have a very bifurcated market now, especially for rentals. People moving here from elsewhere often expect either new construction or are expecting much higher rents, and they seek out the most modern amenities even when it costs them more. Locals are used to living in dumpy places which need to be updated, thus don't seem to move into such areas.