Yeah, I can talk shit about places I’ve never been, also.
HURRRR DERR DETROIT GANG WARS AND EMINEM!!!111 HAHA THE WHOLE PLACE IS BANKRUPT!
Actually, I take that back. I’ve been to Detroit’s airport and they have a fiscally solvent Cinnabon.
ISTM some people like to boast about living in crap conditions because they believe it makes them appear more “authentic” somehow. Or for some other aspect of the boast value, I dunno. I’ve never understood such people.
In my one visit to New York City, I stayed in a hotel located in some suburb along the Long Island Rail Road, and it gave me just about the same commute as any other major metropolitan area, with the added bonus of not having to drive. Anywhere else, people refusing to commute and pay tens of thousands of unnecessary dollars in order to live in a craphole would be viewed as insane.
I’ve heard similar stories about the housing situation in Williston, North Dakota. The most outrageous story I heard was about a man who found housing for $300 a month. It was a child’s playhouse; he was allowed into the house to shower and use the bathroom, and was able to use the family’s wi-fi.
Ugh. Who the fuck would want to live in North Dakota anyway? There’s plenty of land, why the housing shortage?
At least with the apartments in New York, you’re, well… in New York. Plenty of reasons not to be home much.
That’s crazy, I just looked it up. Looks to me like the land based version of spending the summer on an Alaskan fish cannery boat.
Setting aside the virtues of prairie life, the housing shortage is due to a recent oil boom. Housing stock can’t respond immediately to that kind of thing.
Ah, interesting.
And I was kidding about North Dakota, really. I mean, I’m from Mississippi, I have zero room to talk.
You can’t imagine that someone might genuinely have different priorities than you? You really think that the millions of people squeaking by in NYC are really secretly just doing it to impress you?
In DC, with some looking, $850 will buy you a nice room (largish, hardwood floors, nice fixtures) in a shared house in decent neighborhood in a central part of the city. That same $800 will buy you a somewhat lackluster cheap-o studio in a commuter suburb on the far end of metro. If you want a one-bedroom for $800, you are going to have to go off the metro line or into truly dangerous (as opposed to just somewhat edgy) neighborhoods. I don’t think there is anywhere in the area where you are going to find a standalone house or something actually nice for that money.
$650, on the other hand, will buy you half of an okay one-bedroom (which is AWESOME if you are living with your SO, but less awesome if you are sharing with a roommate,) a subpar bedroom in a shared house(it’s either going to be extremely small or have some undesirable quirk), or maybe a nice bedroom in a far-flug or unsafe neighborhood…but then again, there don’t tend to be a lot of group houses in the deep suburbs, so it’s probably either a shared one-bedroom or a suboptimal bedroom. You just aren’t going to find a studio for that money, not anywhere.
So as you see, the options are not really “beautiful palace” or “stinking shithole.” If you are single and you aren’t working with a lot of money for rent, there isn’t really a good situation. There are just different types of bad situations. You just plain aren’t going to find anything particularly nice, and it’s not surprising that some people say “screw it, it’s a shithole but at least it has location going for it.”
Often these situations are temporary. Students, for example, often hunker down in an improvised living space for eight months, and move on up as they get jobs or find SOs to live with. My friend in the closet managed to pay down her debts and save enough to start a new life- she’s finally able to quit her administrative assistant job and is about to embark on her dream of teaching internationally. If she had been renting one of the rooms by herself at market rent, it would have taken her five years to save enough money to do that.
You have to remind yourself that people really do value different things than you do. Every time I see folks doing something I think is crazy or boring, I always remind myself that I have my quirks that people would think is crazy or boring too.
I love the energy of NYC. I love the sights, sounds and smells of Manhattan, the lights, the people, the style, the way folks are, the way folks have been forced to learn to be by the sheer diversity of the city…I love it all. I love getting up at 4 in the morning and walking down the block to buy a kiwi off the street. I could go on and on, but of course, I would bore you.
I love these things more than I love living in a spacious home. I never cared about space in a home and before I moved to NYC I only occupied the tiniest bit of my Rochester apt. I didn’t care about curtains or dining room sets or carpets or big screen tvs or any of the things that my sisters valued about their apartments. I wasn’t happy because when I went out of my front door, I couldn’t find that energy that I loved so much about my time in NY.
So to me, it is worth it to rent a tiny room, if it means being in the heart of the city that stimulates me so much. I love being walking/subway/shuttle/bus distance of everything I want to do, every speaker I want to hear, every restaurant I want to try…I value all of these things over living in a spacious apt.
Now, if my work options don’t pan out the way I am planning, I won’t be able to afford the next step up, which is a tiny apt. that will accommodate my daughter…but if all goes well, I will be able to make it work, and I don’t regret a bit of my cramped quarters at the moment. In fact, I’m having the time of my life.
Shout out to fellow doper **pbbth **and her adorable little girl, who took the time out to spend some time with a new New Yorker and help me learn to enjoy all the perks the city has to offer. That was awesome and I had a great time.
Fair enough; I guess it was puzzling to me why people don’t prefer to enjoy all that while also taking an extra hour to commute each day. But, I guess it’s part of the experience.
I hear you. But, when I go to the corner store, I get a crisp clear view of the statue of liberty. I often don’t make it back from a dash to the store without sitting down and watching the river for a few moments. There is just a very nice feeling to having the atmosphere you adore be literally at your doorstep.
When I am done renting this room, and I move uptown, I know I will love it, but I don’t think I will ever forget the experience I’m having right now, in this tiny space.
These rental prices always blow me away! $800 a month here would get you a 4+ bedroom house, or more. Of course this is a small town, and after working at my job for six years I still couldn’t afford that. I’m just always amazed at the price spread both in property and income.
Yes. I’m from the north Bronx, and although Manhattan may be less than an hour away it’s not nearly the same as living there. The outer boroughs and the burbs can be pretty provincial. In Manhattan you can be in the thick of things from the minute you walk out the door.
I heard an NPR story about this recently
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/25/177324320/making-room-can-smaller-apartments-help-new-york-city-grow
An extra hour every day adds up.
Hell, when I moved a couple of years ago, my round-trip commute dropped just 15 minutes and I felt like my life had changed!
Hopping on a commuter train is not the same thing as hopping on a subway. If you miss the latter, oh well, wait eight minutes and another will come. Miss a commuter train, and you might have to wait another 45 minutes to an hour. This sucks mightily if you’re trying to show up to work on time.
If you are working two jobs or you’re a student or you’re doing a combination of school and work, you probably aren’t spending a lot of time at home, doing the nesting thing.
In light of the “fire hazard” part of these rooms-with-no-windows: How is it really any different than, say, living on the 42nd floor of a skyscraper? There’s plenty of apartment buildings in NY and elsewhere with apartments going all the way up into the sky. In case of a fire, you have fire escapes and such, but it’s not like you’re going to open a bedroom window and jump out much above the 3rd floor. Is a tiny-room-with-no-window all that different than a big-room-with-a-window-that-doesn’t-open-on-the-42nd-floor, fire-hazard-wise? Do all bedrooms in those buildings have fire escapes?
Having lived and worked on a submarine, many of these seem positively spacious 
And I totally understand the appeal. Were I not married, I don’t think I would really mind staying in a tiny apartment in Manhattan as long as I can fit a laptop, a small fridge, and a little TV. Just being within walking distance of so many places to eat, have fun, and so many people to meet, is pretty cool.
Tall buildings like that have concrete-reinforced, fireproofed internal stairwells designed specifically for GTFO emergencies.
Also, even if you can’t get out of the window, just being able to open it could you save you from dying of smoke inhalation while the fire’s being extinguished. And that’s if for some reason you can’t get to the fire exit.
That’s a different situation. North Dakota is currently experiencing an oil boom, and because ND is the Middle of Nowhere[sup]TM[/sup], there aren’t nearly enough houses for the sudden influx of people. I’ve heard of people living in tents on the outskirts of town. In this case, the situation is presumably only temporary, until new construction catches up with demand.
With places like NYC and SoCal, it’s been like this for generations now. People want to live in shitty closets in dirty ghettos because, hey, you get to live in New York !!!
As I’ve said, it makes no sense to me.