Yes, wages have not kept up with productivity gains.

But there is more to the story than induced housing demand.

You can build all the new housing you want in Camden or Detroit or Gary, Indiana. But the presence of new housing by itself isn't enough to make people flock to live in those places. People want to live where there are jobs and economic opportunity.

The problem in the NYC metro area is pretty simple. There are tons of good jobs and lots of economic opportunity here. It's one of the most economically productive regions in the country. But we aren't building enough new housing to accommodate the people who want to live here.

All of that means that the NYC metro area ultimately isn't living up to its full potential. Opening a new business like a restaurant or a retail store is that much harder when you have to pay your workers enough to afford exorbitant rents that are propped up by exclusionary zoning rules.

Silicon Valley is an interesting example of that. There has been a massive transfer of wealth going on there from young tech workers to landlords and incumbent property owners due to rampant NIMBYism that has restricted the housing supply there. People who happened to buy a house there 40 years ago and then did nothing to it are walking away with millions of dollars today. It makes no sense.

Yep, I wonder how many people realize that some of the greatest urban neighborhoods were built before contemporary zoning regulations were even a conceived.

Also, people love to rave about how European cities are designed and then they oppose changes to local zoning and building codes that would actually allow us to replicate that typology in new construction here.

Genius.

Hopefully our leaders keep this in mind the next time there's a shortage of food, fuel, or practically any other commodity.

Egg prices skyrocketing because an avian flu outbreak has killed a bunch of chickens? Clearly we shouldn't try to figure out how farmers can produce more eggs. Let's just institute price controls and the shortage will sort itself out. So what if this leads to more people going hungry? We can't let the capitalists win!

/s

You are literally denying reality.

What you are saying goes against the evidence that is generally accepted among economists and other housing experts.

Housing vacancy rates are near historic lows nationwide (source).

The pace at which new housing is built has lagged behind the household formation rate for years (source). The problem is particularly acute in coastal cities like NYC, Boston, and SF.

A constrained housing supply and low vacancy rates are good for landlords and existing homeowners, but they are bad for renters and prospective homebuyers.

These are basic economic facts that everyone in the real estate industry is aware of. These conditions form the basis of the investment thesis that professional real estate investors use to justify their housing investments.

>There are thousands upon thousands of empty apartments, condos and homes in every one of those markets.

Of course there are thousands of vacancies in NYC. It's a city with 3.5 million housing units. At any given point in time, some of those units will be vacant for any number of reasons. E.g., they're being turned over between tenants, they're being renovated, etc.

Sure, some of those housing units are kept intentionally empty as non-primary residences for the wealthy, but that is a small fraction of the total number of vacant units.

What matters is not the absolute number of vacancies, but the number of vacancies relative to the total number of housing units in a particular city in relation to the number of housing units in demand.

JC has the worst dog poop problem of any city I’ve been to. It’s disgusting.

SF has more human poop on the ground, but at least it’s usually not smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk where you might accidentally step in it.

Thanks, I was looking for a map like this the other day.

Certain people on here love to make up their own facts about things like this because they have an ax to grind.

By the way, it’s been well established that there’s a strong positive correlation between voter participation levels and income, so I’m not surprised to see that downtown has relatively high voter turnout levels.

Higher income people are also more likely to engage with their local elected leaders, which explains why downtown often gets “nice” things earlier than the rest of the city. Things like protected bike lanes, the pedestrian plaza, etc. are a direct result of people lobbying their council person for improvements.

It is true that homeowners tend to have higher voter participation rates than renters, but I suspect that downtown (not including Newport) also has a higher homeownership rate than other less affluent parts of the city. The Census bureau has this data, but I’m typing this on my phone and they don’t seem to have a convenient way to query this data at a census tract level using a mobile browser.

Yep, I just saw that Haus 25 is offering 1 month free now, which I’m pretty sure they weren’t doing just a few months ago.

It’s a sign the market is beginning to soften even if the advertised sticker price hasn’t gone down yet.

This just highlights the fact that landlords will generally seek to charge the maximum amount they can get in a particular market.

It doesn’t matter what happens with their property tax bill. They will seek the maximum rent possible given prevailing market forces.

If a similar tax increase happened in a market like Detroit, many landlords there would not be able to recoup the cost simply because their housing market is the opposite of ours in terms of supply/demand factors.

Did you have any noise issues there?

They have so many negative reviews mentioning thin walls.

How are they with rent increases for lease renewals? I’ve noticed that their advertised prices are usually quite a bit higher than the competition.

I use them too and have been pleasantly surprised how seamless everything is with them.

The downside is they don’t seem to have in-house specialists like some of the larger, more traditional systems do, but it’s fine if you mostly need just primary care.

I wonder why they haven’t expanded to NJ yet.

> Even more if you’ve got indoor plumbing that needs a plumber

Thankfully, my building doesn’t have indoor plumbing. /s

> A)no one claimed every high-rise resident, but data shows most are disconnected and the area needs actively

What data are you referring to?

I think the fatal flaw of District Kitchen is simply its location within the Harborside complex. No one really wants to walk deep inside a sterile office building to go to a food court, especially if it feels like you’re walking through an airport terminal. This only works when you have a captive audience of office workers that’s large enough to sustain it without having to rely on the patronage of outsiders and weekend visitors.

They should have put it at the south end of the building, which faces Columbus Dr and is right next to the Exchange Place PATH. That would drive more foot traffic because it would be a lot more convenient and visible to people commuting by bus and PATH, as well as for people who live in Paulus Hook.

To me, the renovation of that whole building complex is like putting lipstick on a pig. They should have bulldozed it and started from a clean slate. The area should be built with a smaller scale street grid that’s more in keeping with the historic parts of downtown. That would have made it feel more like an actual neighborhood that people want to spend time in.

Why exactly would the Meadowlands line have such low capacity? It’s not like it’s a single-track line.

Isn’t the problem mainly the fact that NJ Transit has decided they don’t want to run more trains during major events due to operational/budgetary issues? Or is there some sort of limitation in the line’s design that justifies building another rail line out there?

Agreed. The food is tasty, but I stopped going a few months ago because the wait time is ridiculous. If you look behind the counter at what they’re doing, their workflow seems really inefficient.

During the COVID “lockdowns,” I would happily go there and wait in line because I didn’t have much else to do on Saturday mornings, but now it just doesn’t make sense for me.

It’s also annoying that they have few places to sit down and enjoy your breakfast.

I prefer Dulce de Leche in the Heights. Their breakfast sandwiches are pretty good, but it’s cheaper and faster and they have a wider variety of fresh pastries. Plus, the overall vibe is far less pretentious than Scram.

First off, you should call the Beacon management office and ask them. I used to live there and I would be very surprised if they approve of you leaving a POD container anywhere on the property.

Alternatively, you could probably leave the container in a public parking space on the street, but first you need to check with the parking authority to make sure you have the right permits.

But then you're rolling the dice because some of the streets around there are sketchy and deserted at night, especially Cornelison and Fairmount, so don't be surprised if your POD gets broken into if you leave it on the street. Clifton Place is relatively safe to park on, but parking is usually tight there.

> Uber really doesnt care if a driver cancel on u

That’s very short-sighted. Uber should care if they care about customer retention.

This stuff leaves a bad impression on passengers and makes them less likely to use the app in the future. No well-run business would turn away paying customers like that.

My company pays for car rides when I have to commute early in the morning or late at night. So even though I don’t care about the price, I definitely use Uber less than I would if I were 100% sure they would send me a TLC driver when I request a ride from JC to NYC. I’m sure I’m not the only person in this situation.

???

TLC drivers are everywhere in JC. Just take a look at license plates the next time you’re out and about.

I take Uber to work in midtown Manhattan semi frequently because it’s much faster than taking public transit at 6am.

Most of the time, I get a driver with TLC plates on the first try. But it is super frustrating when the app does match me with someone who doesn’t have TLC plates. It’s made me late for work a few times.

Uber could easily solve this problem by tweaking the code to at least give passengers the option to filter out non-TLC plates.

> #1 why would any NJ uber drivers have a TLC plate

Drivers don’t need to live in NY to get NY TLC plates.

Some NJ-based Uber drivers get TLC plates because they can make more money by being able to pick up passengers in both NJ and NYC.

TLC plates do involve extra licensing and insurance costs, but the benefits outweigh the costs for people who drive for Uber/Lyft full-time.

Looks like they are supposed to post proposals on this page. Not sure why there’s a bunch of old stuff posted there right now. https://publiccomments.panynj.gov/

Here’s where they solicited comments on the proposed budget, but the link is now stale: https://publiccomments.panynj.gov/proposed-budget/

Lol, nope. I did the same thing on the survey.

The public comment process for the budget is a completely different process.

Those chairs and tables aren’t the beefiest, but they aren’t THAT light.

You’d need some pretty strong gusts to propel this stuff over the railing and into the river.

People like to say that the choice to buy an SUV is driven by practicality.

But minivans and station wagons are amazingly practical while also being less harmful to other road users and less likely to rollover than a top-heavy SUV. But they get ignored because SUVs are cool and minivans and station wagons are not.

What sucks is that huge, heavy EVs like the Hummer EV are going to create a domino effect that will force other classes of cars to get bigger.

Crash tests are being redesigned to account for the emergence of heavier, taller vehicles. That means that smaller cars will need to be beefed up (i.e., get larger and more expensive) in order to protect their passengers.

This new test by the IIHS is a great example of that. It was designed to better simulate the impact from a truck or SUV than prior tests. Popular cars like the Camry and Altima performed poorly on this new test and, as a result, Toyota and Nissan essentially have no choice but to make next the generation of those cars larger and heavier in order to get good safety ratings.

The high-end, “special trip” malls are doing the best. Upper income people are doing better than ever and they still want to buy luxury goods like Louis Vuitton bags in person.

It’s the lower and mid-tier malls that are struggling. The middle class is getting squeezed and people are happy to shift their spending to online shopping in search of deals.

I agree that Newport seems to be doing fairly well for itself. And I think the fact that it’s in a walkable area with good transit access is a big part of that.

But it will be interesting to see what happens if/when Newport loses its anchor tenants (Sears, JCPenny, & Macy’s). Those anchor tenants occupy huge spaces that are hard to re-lease.

Vacant anchor spaces are a huge financial drag on a mall and if that happens at Newport it will probably spur the complete redevelopment of the mall into a more modern mixed used concept.