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2000 to 2500 is the going price in our area for a 2 bedroom apartment not renting a house in queens . Unless you are closer to manhattan .those areas like long island city , astoria etc are far more. Bayside has no subway so wile a prime area it is not that popularcfor those who commute to the city. We have the very expensive long island railroad in our area .
.manhattan is another story and 2x our rent is the norm. Rent and health insurance and our long term care policy alone runs about 40k in pretax dollars.
The nyc projects allow you to qualify up to 69k . They are real ghetto , there is not one i would want to live in today. The wait list is years. Rent is based on income. I would die working if that was my choice .
You can qualify for projects with an income of 69k in NYC?!? Wow. Well anyway, low income retirees would not be retiring to projects, but to low income senior housing. There are very few of those in Manhattan. Not many, but they do exist; I know of 5-6 of them. Looking at them online, they don't look bad, but I am sure the waiting list is very long. I know of additional one in Queens and another one in the Bronx, and both seem okay. I don't know what the qualifying income is. There are also a few upscale senior residences in Manhattan, many more in Long Island, there is a life-plan CCRC in Kendal on Hudson (which is slightly upstate of NYC, reasonable daytrip access to NYC). But again, there are meager pickings in the boroughs (and practically none in Manhattan) for middle-income people (incl retirees) who want to live in their own condo/co-op in NYC. I think I found one such place in the central Bronx. I think. I don't live there yet.
Illinois does not tax retirement income and it is much more reasonable to live in Chicago. You could live on the Gold Coast and have a lot right at your door. People say winter here is horrible, but it seems to me, the east coast has it had worse the last several years.
Chicago doesn't get all THAT much snow unless the wind direction is just right and the lake hasn't frozen over..and if you are within a short distance of the lake you have some great natural air conditioning that makes summers delightful. But Chicago REALLY knows how to do winter - in the worst of storms they are on top of it and a few hours later the streets are so clear you wouldn't even know it snowed.
I'd love to retire to Chicago, as is I'm about a 2 hour Amtrak ride away so, could be worse.
Chicago doesn't get all THAT much snow unless the wind direction is just right and the lake hasn't frozen over..and if you are within a short distance of the lake you have some great natural air conditioning that makes summers delightful. But Chicago REALLY knows how to do winter - in the worst of storms they are on top of it and a few hours later the streets are so clear you wouldn't even know it snowed.
I'd love to retire to Chicago, as is I'm about a 2 hour Amtrak ride away so, could be worse.
Chicago has bone-chilling winters balanced by summers resembling those of east Texas bayous. One of their most "delightful" summers was that of 1995.
There are, however, a number of Polish and Czech restaurants worth a visit. Some of the Czech restaurants and even a bakery are located in Berwyn and Cicero. Sadly, neither Chicago nor New York can compete with San Fransisco or New Orleans. New York restaurants generally bring a smile to those familiar with Europe.
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Yeah, but it seems we aren't exactly alike, since you live in Chapel Hill, NC :-). I tried places similar to your domicile (university town), and nearly died of misery. I need a huge cosmopolitan megalopolis around me, and it is hard to find a safe AND economically priced place to live in such cities.
Oh trust me, I've been wanting to move from Chapel Hill since the day I moved here. 4 more years for my husband's job and then we are out of here. We are planning to move back to the Phila. area. But NYC fascinates me (hence my reading this thread, albeit two years later!). It's just impractical for us. But I hope to make a lot of day trips.
Oh trust me, I've been wanting to move from Chapel Hill since the day I moved here. 4 more years for my husband's job and then we are out of here. We are planning to move back to the Phila. area. But NYC fascinates me (hence my reading this thread, albeit two years later!). It's just impractical for us. But I hope to make a lot of day trips.
I own a pied a terre in a "disreputable" part of NYC (ie, the Bronx), while I live primarily in Boston, MA (in the best part of that particular city). I have the same fascination with NYC as you do, or probably greater (since my fascination originated from watching movies as a kid in Europe)... but, as is well known, NYC has problems as well, which is why I have made only a tentative commitment to it so far, in the cheapest way I could think of.
Presumably you know that NYC (as well as NY State) is having huge fiscal problems, ie, progressively more massively insufficient tax revenue, which started a couple of years before the Covid story, and it is not going to get better after the vaccine. Not sure if you are also aware, about one quarter of all welfare housing in the US is in NYC, and no matter where you are in NYC, you are never far away from a public housing project. NYC has recently dismantled a large prison on Rikers Island, and basically released the inmates into the city. Violent crime in NYC was creeping up last year, and has doubled this year. It is so bad that it is even all over international press. Civil unrest has been very significant in NYC this year, and ongoing.
I am comparing all of that with central Boston, which - in addition to the beautiful 19th century architecture (though regrettably lack of the stunning skyscrapers built from the 1920s to 1940s in NYC) - has very little visible homelessness, practically no public housing, vanishingly little violent crime, and a properly functioning law enforcement. Regarding civil unrest, there has been about a total of one day of that in Boston, and the police controlled it very rapidly. In fact, the most recent six months in Boston have been quite pleasant, despite the epidemic - something that one certainly can't say of NYC.
NYC right now seems like a pretty uncomfortable place. The city is now likely at the most unstable point it has ever been, except perharps in 1776. It remains to be seen whether it will become frankly dangerous, and substantially deteriorate economically/culturally. Still seems far fetched, but if you had any real contact with the city in the recent couple of years, you likely know that it is not impossible.
Other than problems with safety and deterioration of municipal services, there is of course the factor of high cost of living. But if you are on a retiree's income, much of which is typically not taxable, NY State progressive tax (even with the additional NYC tax) is not an extreme problem. Also, the famously expensive NYC real estate is in fact not more expensive to buy than in most other large cities in the US - but maintaining a place is indeed very expensive (eg, I am paying exactly twice as much for maintenance, real estate taxes, and utilities in NYC as I am paying in Boston, for condos of similar size - even though my condo in Boston is in the best part of the city, and worth four times the condo in the scruffy part of NYC).
The last issue is that the new glass architecture that is taking over NYC is totally faceless, making some parts of the city look more like Dubai than New York City. The nasty thing about the new glass architecture is that even the truly breathtaking old skyscrapers (like the Chrysler building) are made to appear small and insignificant when buried in what looks increasingly like an enormous garbage landfill with millions of tons of shards of glass. If it gets to the point that one cannot recognize NYC as NYC any more, I am not sure there would be a point in moving there, in going through the inconvenience of moving and increased cost of living. So, I am in a waiting mode re NYC right now, I want to see what happens to it. I am 60, ie, still on the younger side of retirement, so I hope I still have at least a decade to defer decisions about where to live towards the end of life.
I think my main problem is that what I really want is to move to New York City sometime between the year 1865 and 1965. And THAT is definitely not going to be possible :-)
NYC is not as it was before Feb or March 2020....the Covid pandemic has had unfortunate consequences for NYC. Many stores and restaurants/bars are boarded up and many have gone out of business. The city dumped many vagrants into 139 nice hotels and the Upper West Side has unfortunate results of vagrancy, crime, drug use, encampments, bodies laying on sidewalks - all on the streets.
"The NYC exodus: Fleet of moving trucks arrive in the Upper West Side and dozens wait in line to hire U-Hauls as residents reeling from lockdown and the surge in homeless people call it quits."
"Big Apple residents flee to the suburbs: Westchester County sees July home sales more than DOUBLE as NYC is ravaged by coronavirus and soaring crime rates"
The entertainment industry in NYC has been decimated.
Entertainment venues and theaters remain closed. Artists/actors/musicians and associated personnel in the entertainment industry are unemployed and out of work.
Indoor dining in restaurants it was intimated today by mayor will not occur until a vaccine is available.
Many places in NYC are ghost towns in the evening, including Greenwich Village neighborhoods.
Last edited by matisse12; 08-31-2020 at 05:35 PM..
NYC is not as it was before Feb or March 2020....the Covid pandemic has had unfortunate consequences for NYC. Many stores and restaurants/bars are boarded up and many have gone out of business. The city dumped many vagrants into 139 nice hotels and the Upper West Side has unfortunate results of vagrancy, crime, drug use, encampments, bodies laying on sidewalks - all on the streets.
"The NYC exodus: Fleet of moving trucks arrive in the Upper West Side and dozens wait in line to hire U-Hauls as residents reeling from lockdown and the surge in homeless people call it quits."
"Big Apple residents flee to the suburbs: Westchester County sees July home sales more than DOUBLE as NYC is ravaged by coronavirus and soaring crime rates"
The entertainment industry in NYC has been decimated.
Entertainment venues and theaters remain closed. Artists/actors/musicians and associated personnel in the entertainment industry are unemployed and out of work.
Indoor dining in restaurants it was intimated today by mayor will not occur until a vaccine is available.
Many places in NYC are ghost towns in the evening, including Greenwich Village neighborhoods.
If it were only the issue of Covid, NYC would have no difficulty waiting out the epidemic and fully recovering after the vaccine is available, the way it is happening in Boston. In fact, NYC was surprisingly successful in controlling and limiting the epidemic. NYC unfortunately has deeper social problems that the epidemic, which the epidemic has just intensified, not caused - the problrms were there long before the epidemic - and these problems are the reason why so many New Yorkers are leaving permanently. It is a difficult city to govern in general, but the present city government is a total disaster. This is too much of a political subject for the Retirement subforum, but it does greatly complicate the decision to retire to NYC. If the city continues on the present course, it is not going to be livable for a self-dependent senior (or for many other types of people).
OK, so let's go with NYC has a ton of problems. Where are those creative and innovative people going to go? Most megacities - Chicago, SF, LA, etc. - have a significant share of similar problems. They aren't going to relocate to where I am. Most mid-sized cities like Raleigh or Indianapolis won't be sufficient either.
While NYC has problems, it's not like you'll have many comparable places, even if it becomes a husk of its former shelf.
OK, so let's go with NYC has a ton of problems. Where are those creative and innovative people going to go? Most megacities - Chicago, SF, LA, etc. - have a significant share of similar problems. They aren't going to relocate to where I am. Most mid-sized cities like Raleigh or Indianapolis won't be sufficient either.
While NYC has problems, it's not like you'll have many comparable places, even if it becomes a husk of its former shelf.
I'm in Boston at the moment. It doesn't have a significant share of those problems. It has the biggest concentration of biomed institutions in the world, it has Harvard, it has the largest public library in the US, it has a few very good museums, it has some legendary old restaurants, it has about half of the oldest history of the country, it has miles and miles of red brick Federal and Victorian architecture.
On the other hand, it has very little in terms of welfare housing projects (practically none in the central city), relatively little homelessness (no tent cities in the streets like San Francisco and other West Coast cities, or large numbers of the ambulatory severely mentally ill and addicts like NYC), it will have a budget deficit this year but not catastrophic, law enforcement is strong and excellent, very little serious crime.
People tend to be very grouchy and unfriendly, and very parochial (ie, Boston is the hub of the universe, per 19th century Bostonian Oliver Wendell Holmes, and nothing else exists in the minds of Bostonians except for the Boston metro area and the rest of New England :-).. but that is pretty much the only downside of Boston - I thought I hated it, but am finding out that I can actually very much live with it, compared with some other possibilities :-).
Btw, there are new cities rising for creative and innovative people, very notably Austin, TX. In terms of creativity and innovation, NYC has been becoming a husk of its former self for quite a while already... Again, NYC has a quarter of welfare housing in the nation - no other city has to contend with that. That in and of itself can bring the city down crashing. The city has not been really founded on any creativity and innovation for quite a while, but has been propped up heavily by international investment in a glamorous image in recent decades, with continued marketing of that image abroad. The internationals, however, are starting to find out about the problems...... so, we'll see how things will develop further. I honestly don't know.
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