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They borrow from family and some live in multigenerational homes. In the Indian culture, it's the eldest son's responsibility to take care of his and his wife's parents.
Borrowing from family is huge. The pay-it-forward cycle from generation to generation (not that it has been that many) works on paper. Think of how much money you accumulate as you get older and have adult sons/daughters. The other part of it is how close the families are so borrowing/giving money isn't a huge issue.
They borrow from family and some live in multigenerational homes. In the Indian culture, it's the eldest son's responsibility to take care of his and his wife's parents.
This is a fact. My close Indian friend has forgone a wife and family to care for his elderly parents. He will be a millionaire very soon. Great salary living at home till middle age. If he decides to marry wife will move in. Sisters are both doctors. If he wanted a house all of them would chip in and he could buy cash. Americans don't do that. Simple as that.
Where are they getting the cash from? They come off the boat and scoop up a 700, 800k house and start a business in 3 days. WTH?
Maybe I should move overseas and come back?
Hard work. Come here with nothing and work in the back of a Chinese restaurant or a 7 11. NO ,bling, Beemers, trucks, expensive clothes, lux apartment or any of that for 10 years. Chip in with another family and buy house cash.
Yeah I know all about the multi generational thing.
I used to do service/repair work years ago and the entire family would come out and surround me while I was *trying* to do my job. They would just hover around me and watch every move I made. It drove me insane.
It was always very uncomfortable and hard to concentrate on my job.
Apparently they are very paranoid and think everyone is a thief and does bad work. They would also try to squeeze extra work out of you. And then to top it off, would try to haggle the bill when the job was completed.
I swear to you, I am not lying or exaggerating, this exact scenario would play out at nearly every Indian family I went to do work for. This was usually upper middle to wealthy neighborhoods, like Dix Hills, Old Westbury, Jericho, Woodbury, Syossett etc…
Exactly. My best friend is a contractor. He is currently experiencing what you describe. That's cultural. In the third world everyone is out to hustle you.
Borrowing from family is huge. The pay-it-forward cycle from generation to generation (not that it has been that many) works on paper. Think of how much money you accumulate as you get older and have adult sons/daughters. The other part of it is how close the families are so borrowing/giving money isn't a huge issue.
I think their ways make sense.
Westerners are so obsessed with old Horatio Alger tales, bootstrap pulling and an "every man for themself" ideology that seems to have back fired.
Back in the late 1950s when my family and relatives left the city for the Island, corporations were heavily taxed, as were the wealthy. While my family was solidly middle class and college educated, we first lived in a development of split-level homes called Damin Park. No signs exist to say that it was ever there, but I do remember the advertisement that marked it's entrance. Kind of a bill board.
Damin Park was diverse in some ways. For some, my family, for example, it was a "starter house". For other, the last house. We had one Chinese family. He was an engineer.
Oyster Bay was not only comprised of wealthy families. We had the mega rich, the townies who basically were employed by the rich, upwardly mobile middle college educated middle class, working class with "middle class income" folks who made decent money but were not terribly upper middle class, black folks from the North Carolina Outer Banks who moved here before any of the "city people" or white "townies" did. They only lived on Pine Hollow Rd, Mill River Rd. and a few streets on the West side of South Street. Tooker Ave. was integrated.
We had Protestants, Catholics and Jews. About 1/3rd of each. Oyster Bay wasn't technically a suburb, because it predated the 1950s and 1960s and it was not built on a potato field to house retuning GIs. We also had history.
I loved growing up there in the 60s and 70s. There were three elementary schools. When we first moved in, there was one school The Oyster Bay School which served K-12.
Sometime in the 1980s, it became a place where only the rich could live.
It wasn't diverse by today's standards, but it was more diverse that most of Long Island was at the time.
Now if you looked at the "worst" streets in Oyster Bay, the cheapest house will be over 500K. Even the ones down by the railroad.
Now if you looked at the "worst" streets in Oyster Bay, the cheapest house will be over 500K. Even the ones down by the railroad.
I don't even recognize Long Island anymore.
If you were to revisit the last place you lived before leaving this eroding sandbar, you would be saddened. Between University 'investors', flippers, short term rental owners and city or Nassau people moving here and bringing with them their cut it down/build it up/pave it over mentality, change is evident. Two houses behind me have removed every last tree leveled their yards and erected white vinyl fences. One house is uphill of me -- we no longer have any privacy, except for a few sparse evergreens. Where there was once only one rental on my 10 house street, there are now three, and another being spruced up as an AirBnB.
Two bedroom converted summer cottages on a postage stamp are going for $450K - $490K. I am seeing more of my friends putting their homes up for sale as soon as their youngest graduates WM. They have left NY for greener pastures. I'm hoping to follow the outbound path blazed by you and my friends within the next 2 years.
In the words of Billy Joel's Downeaster Alexa, "...But there ain't no island left for Islanders like me."
I’ve noticed HHH school district has shifted quite a bit in demographics as well. Plenty of hispanics and blacks in those schools now. Are most of those families well educated or do they rent in the area?
I’ve noticed HHH school district has shifted quite a bit in demographics as well. Plenty of hispanics and blacks in those schools now. Are most of those families well educated or do they rent in the area?
There has always been a decent amount of both groups in the district. Wheatley Heights, a predominantly black, but diverse, middle class community is in the district. Some have been in Dix Hills for a while too.
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