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You're right, of course. Certainly the gap between rich and poor has grown, but this is mostly the result of greater wealth concentrated in areas that were already wealthy (UES, UWS, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope) or areas that transitioned from commercial/industrial directly to wealthy (Tribeca, SoHo, the Financial District). That wealth is NOT moving to the newly gentrified/gentrifying areas, at least not directly. The families moving to the gentrifying areas are office workers with household incomes of $100-200k. Wealthy, but certainly not setting any records or creating any kind of "vast disparity".
It will be interesting to see whether the term "middle class" is redefined or whether it is eliminated.Elimination might be more honest.What passes for middle class now would have been considered working class 30 years ago.
Brooklynborndad is correct that " they were living the SAME neighborhoods, in the SAME houses, for the most part, as african americans, chinese, indians, orthodox Jews, etc are today" but there is a big difference other than the race factor.It used to take only one breadwinner in a family to support those households 30 years ago and today it takes 2 or 3 or more.
This is not just a NY phenomenon of course because the middle class as we knew it has been stripped bare by the massive wealth transfer that has occurred over the last 30 years across the country.Most of the common wealth that enabled a middle class has been transferred to the rich and to corporations.I'm not so sure that any of us can consider ourselves really middle class anymore, even though everyone wants to.
Its true we have had changes in income distribution that have hurt all outside the top quintile (top 20%) But I think the decline in real income is less dramatic than you suggest - it may be MORE common to have multiple earners, but there is also more consumption - we didnt have cable TV, we had one car (that would be considered mediocre and featureless by todays standards) we had no video game systems, a long distance call was a big deal, as was a vacation that involved an airplane, etc, etc.
Anyway, I was not trying to address the income and consumption dilemmas of the middle class in NY or elsewhere, but simply confirm the overall consensus social status of those nabes.
Based on my brief observations (in person) of Windsor Terrace, it did not appear trustfunded/guarantored. JMHO.
For the purposes of this thread, I am not using "trustfunded" as the definition of whats "above" middle class. I will included yuppified nabes as no longer middle class. I suspect the number of trust fund/parenal supported people and nabes is a much smaller fraction of the affluent in NY than would gather from casual putdowns in this forum, but thats a topic for a different thread.
I oftentimes ask myself the same question, whether we really lack a middle class. Based on my observations, what I see happening is the following:
The current and future working/middle class of NYC is brown and black, and over the next 10 years the stigma will change (I hope!). So to answer your question, I think the middle class is here and here to stay, and is brown and black.
I hate to say this but I doubt it. One example SE Queens is a middle class area stat wise but many residents living east of it consider it a dangerous and down and out ghetto. Present fear is that this element is moving further east destroying the QAL in places like Elmont and Valley Stream. I doubt in 10 years this thinking will change.
1nevets you are giving one example, and really we don't know how the transformation of the growing brown and black middle class will effect the city. I think the stigma is the bigger issue, and not that brown and black middle class communities cannot be successful or thrive.
New York has always been expensive, at least compared with other cities. Prices have gone up in every neighborhood and everyone is feeling squeezed. However, when people talk about “middle-class housing,” they’re not talking about Riverdale or Flushing. They’re talking about Manhattan.
In the 70s, the “rich” lived in a small section of the UES (west of Lexington), parts of Brooklyn Heights, and that’s about it. The UWS (apart from Riverside Drive) was “middle-class” with significant sketchy/borderline ghetto areas. A lot of the East Village was a burned out heroin den with a bona fide shanty town in Tompkins Square. SoHo factories were just starting to be converted lofts by poor working artists. Tribeca was essentially abandoned. Nobody lived in the Financial District.
The city and the federal government created subsidized artist housing, like Westbeth (in the West Village) or Manhattan Plaza in Hell’s Kitchen, to get people to move in and clean up the city. Interestingly, many artists weren’t initially interested. General rents elsewhere in the city were not so high as to make ugly buildings like Manhattan Plaza attractive.
In the 70s and 80s, middle-class people could live in Manhattan if they wanted to. Now it’s not so easy.
Many people feel that being excluded entirely from Manhattan is an insult added to injury, i.e., already expensive prices in the boroughs. “Middle class” people used to move to the boroughs because (1) they wanted someplace quieter, (2) they wanted more space, (3) they wanted a different type of housing, e.g., a house instead of an apartment, etc. It was a choice. Many people feel that they don’t have a choice anymore, and they resent it.
1nevets you are giving one example, and really we don't know how the transformation of the growing brown and black middle class will effect the city. I think the stigma is the bigger issue, and not that brown and black middle class communities cannot be successful or thrive.
Thing is that SEQueens has been middle class and black (African American and/or Caribbean) since the 60s. It doesn't fit within the current trends in NYC and will probably continue to be unique in this way.
What's interesting is that black/brown poor neighborhoods gentrify because of location. That factor alone seems to affect who moves where within NYC more than anything else.
For example, Red Hook is gentrifying but Cambria Heights, Laurelton and St. Albans probably never will.
Location, location, location is the name of the game.
How could Cambria Heights gentrify? It's already the second wealthiest neighborhood in Queens, only inches behind Whitestone.
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