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What is the cost of living in new york
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Increase cost of living in New York
As a New Yorker, I can totally relate to how people suffer from the increase in the cost of living for the last five years. Cost of living, is the amount of money needed to maintain a certain way of life, which includes housing, food, taxes and health care amongst other things. The difficulty of maintaining a household in New York is visible in every aspect of living and although everything has double or even quadrupled in expenses; wages have either stayed the same or make little to no difference. Article, reports, books and blogs support the huge increase of the cost of living.
Today’s time is changing for New Yorkers, where being able to live on your own is becoming harder. We can hardly enjoy our family at a nice dinner table, or chat with them to see how their day went. The reason is because some of us have to work either a double shift or triple shift to be able to provide our families with a roof over their head. Furthermore, with the escalating costs of rent; minimum wage salary is not enough to get anyone by in New York City.
In order for people in New York City to cope with the high costs of rent they would go as far as to share a studio apartment between two to three people. All for the sake of not losing their apartment and possibly becoming homeless, this is why people would go as far as to rent out their living room as room to sleep in. The privacy of an individual or family has to be sacrificed; they must also be able to trust strangers living among them to cover the cost of rent. According to The New York Time “Cost of Living Going Up At Fast Pace In New York” by Patrick McGeehan the regional commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statics Michael L. Dolfman stated that “th...
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...lthough our cost of living increased, some of our wages either did not make much of a difference or did not help at all. According to Economic Notes:
NYC lost 65,000 payroll jobs in the last three months of 2008. From December 2007 to December 2008, the city lost 53,600 jobs, or 1.4 percent, while the country lost 2.8 million jobs, or 2.0 percent. NYC sectors recording job gains included Real Estate, Professional Services, Health Services, and Accommodations and Food Service. Sectors experiencing losses included Construction, Manufacturing, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Information, and Arts and Entertainment.
New York has experience major increase in living in the last few years. An increase that has affected families, individuals and our economy, we have all suffered the major blow of our changing economy and the hardship of maintaining a household as best we can.
“How can a middle-class family afford a rent of $2,000 or even $2,800 when the family consists of four children and a single working parent. when food needs to be on the table every night and bills need to be paid. I find this ridiculous, no one ever wanted to live in Bushwick and now all of a sudden these people want to live here.” -
In chapter one of "Nickel and Dimed", Barbara stated that she is renting a room for $500 and having a waitress job which is paying her $2.43 plus tips "from 2:00 till 10:00p.m". After a month, she would get $311.04 without tips and tax. Assume Barbara get $20 tips every day, she would get $711.04 without tax per month. After paying off the rent, she would left with about only $150. This is not enough for food and gas for a month. Which is why Barbara had to get another job where she works at Jerry 's. Meanwhile in the current time, according to an article by Kwelia, it says that "The cost of Bay Area living continues to be a hot topic of discussion in the region. The average asking price for a one-bedroom in San Francisco is now $2,673 a month, up more than 10 percent from last year." Imagine working as a minimum wage worker full time, getting paid 9 dollars per hour for 8 hours a day. The person would earn $1440 without tax. It is almost half of the rent fee. The person is then forced to have two jobs, the only other option is to live with another person to share the renting fee. As a result a person who is unable to get two jobs working at the minimum wage or finding a roommate would likely to be homeless. The person is then forced to move out from the city to find a cheaper place to
On the very first page, Riis states, “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care (5).” In first-person, Riis discusses his observations through somewhat unbiased analysis, delivering cold, hard, and straightforward facts. Following the War of 1812, New York City had a population of roughly half a million, desperately in need of homes. The solutions were mediocre tenements: large spaces divided into cheaper, smaller rooms, regardless of whether or not there were windows. Some families were lucky, being able to afford the rooms with windows, while others had to live in pitch-black, damp, and tiny rooms literally in the center of the building. These tenements contained inadequate living conditions; disease murdered many citizens, causing a shortage of industrial workers. The Board of Health passed the “Tenement-House Act” in 1867,...
There are frequent footnotes in the novel, many of them containing statistics about low-wage lifestyles. One claims that “In 1997, a living wage for a single parent supporting a single child in the Twin Cities metro area was $11.77 an hour” (Ehrenreich 127). Throughout the novel, Ehrenreich never gets paid this much in any of her jobs. In fact, she is amazed when a potential wage for a job is “not $8.50 but an incredible $10 an hour” (Ehrenreich 142). Even living on her own Ehrenreich could hardly pay for the basic necessities to live, it would have been impossible to do so with a child to care for as well. Another statistic stats that “Nearly one-fifth of all homeless people (in twenty-nine cities across the nation) are employed in full- or part- time jobs” (Ehrenreich 26). This fact shows the flaws in the low-wage workforce. After all, minimum wage is meant to be designed to be able to support people with necessities such as shelter and food, yet 20% of those without homes cannot afford shelter with these wages. Through these statistic, ehrenreich is able to establish that it is nearly impossible to live a decent lifestyle with just low-wage job
One of the most prominent concerns of Evicted is the issue of inescapable financial instability as it relates to eviction. In the very first few pages of the book, Desmond reveals that the majority of poor renting families in America spend over 50% of their income on housing, with an even more astonishing one in four spending over 70% of their income on it (4). When families are spending the majority of their already meager income on housing alone, it is no surprise that they have little money left for savings or self-betterment programs such as a college education. Compounded with this is the fact that some welfare systems are constructed in a way that discourages long-term financial responsibility. For example, Supplemental Security Income, a program that provides monthly stipends for low-income elderly or disabled individuals, is revoked if individuals have too much money in their bank account (217). For
In many communities across our country, mainly vacation or resort locales, a lack of affordable housing is seen. As a result, workers must drive around thirty miles out of town to find an apartment cheap enough to support their low wage earnings. Since low-wage earners usually have a lack of savings, they are unable to put down money in advance for a cheap apartment. For instance, Ehrenreich explains that “If you can't put up the two months' rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week.” (Ehrenreich 27). Ehrenreich ended up facing the physical toll of handling two jobs at one just to provide for the needs of basic survival. This can be seen as an important issue within our society because workers need to have access to affordable housing otherwise they will get restless and move somewhere closer to their current housing. Not only will this decrease the number of staff on hand for certain locations, the issue of no affordable housing will eventually put people out onto the streets. Our society constantly puts forward the need to make money off of high prices, instead of helping those with little to no money. An unchecked issue like this would grow into something far worse which at the time would be very difficult to handle. The notion of taking two or more jobs at the same time just
McNamara, Robert Hartmann. "Homelessness." Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues. Ed. Michael Shally-Jensen. Vol. 3: Family and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. 1024-1031. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 May 2014. .
The living wage movement is an economic reform movement that has become one of the most important public policy issues that has come up within the last 10 years. Although there is no single definition, it is often defined as an hourly salary that allows working families of four to have an income that is above the federal poverty line. This means that the livable wage laws often stipulate that hourly wages should be two to three times above the federal Mininum wage. However, unlike the Mininum wage, the living wage has so far only been enacted on the county and city level. Cities and counties enforce the living wage for companies that have contracts with their respective cities and counties, receive subsidies from their cities or counties, other economic benefits cities and counties provide to companies, and in some cases a livable wage is required for the tourist areas of the particular city. For cities and local governments, the livable wage is perceived as a measure to increase the welfare of the poor. However, like everything in life the livable wage creates its on costs that along with its benefits of increased wage to some low income earners.
The critical challenge within in today’s society is that college tuition should be free or if not free, more affordable for all students. Certainly, higher education should not be considered a luxury where only the wealthy could afford, but an opportunity for all caste systems. It must be an accessible and affordable opportunity for all students in order for them to invest in their education. Higher education is important because it provides more careers to choose from than the careers offered without having a college degree. Ultimately, the issue here is whether it is right to make college tuition more affordable for the students.
New York, constituent state of the United States of America, is one of the 13 original colonies and states. New York is bounded to the west and north by Lake Erie, the Canadian province of Ontario, Lake Ontario, and the Canadian province of Quebec; to the east by the New England states of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut; to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean and New Jersey; and to the south by Pennsylvania. The capital is Albany. Until the 1960s, New York was the country’s leading state in nearly all population, cultural, and economic indexes. Its displacement by California beginning in the middle of that decade was caused by the enormous growth rate that has persisted on the West Coast rather than by a large decline in
The American dream was owning a house with a white picket fence. Now this dream is impossible. Individuals and families find it more difficult to find a decent home to rent in a suitable living area. According to Huffington Post, the hourly wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment in California is at least $26 an hour. This is more than triple the minimum wage. Eviction, relocation, and inflation are the common keywords that associate with affordable housing. I 'm hoping to persuade you to support affordable housing for all. Today, I will be discussing, one, inflation of the housing market that needs to decrease, two, eviction from homes, three having to move to communities far from their work site.
Gentrification is designed to improve the quality of life for the residents, but the fact is that it pushes out old residents to welcome in young and wealthy citizens. To analyze the demographic even further, gentrified neighborhoods in New York City have seen an increase in white population despite a city wide decrease. As Kate Abbey-Lamertz of the Huffington Post states, “The report notes that change is driven by educated people moving in, rather than by existing residents becoming more educated.” These changes are being driven by a millennial demographic who can afford the changed aesthetic. The influx of millennials are pushing out families whose lifestyle can’t keep up with the changing demographic. Even though these changes have been occurring for almost thirty years, and the city hasn’t made the changes needed for people who need low income housing. New York City’s gentrification must be slowed in order for people in low income housing to catch
Wilson, W.J. (1996). When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor New York, NY: Knopf
The problem I am going to discuss is homelessness in Long Island. What is homelessness and who defines it? Homelessness is a person lacking adequate shelter or otherwise residing below the minimal standard of what is considered a safe dwelling. The federal definition of homeless is an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, or adequate nighttime residence (HUD, 2011). Homelessness is not just a problem in big cities like New York or Los Angeles, but rather it is a global epidemic affecting small towns and suburbs such as Long Island.
Since the mid-1970s, affordable housing has become increasingly difficult to find. This is because Americans are being asked to contribute more and more or their paychecks to their rent and when they become homeless it is difficult to get themselves back into affordable housing. It has been reported that “A full-time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom unit priced at the Fair Market Rent anywhere in the United States. Nationally a full-time worker must earn $18.32 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent.”(National low-income Housing Coalation 2010) Today, our federal minimum wages contributes to our increasing homeless population, while even if you work fulltime making $7.25 isnt even enough to get you off the street. In 1970 there was a...