if you're thinking of living in... NYT articles
Subject: if you're thinking of living in... NYT articles
after reading the NYT about park slope from 1987 I thought it would be interesting to dig up the other articles from the 80's. The rent prices in park slope in 1987 were pretty high. They said a studio was around $800 which today with inflation is around $1500. An article about the East Village was also interesting with prices being lower than they are now but a two bedroom on Ave C going for $900 in '85 which is around $1600 today. Thats not cheap to live on C in 85. Heres the article. Anyone who lived in new york in the 80's have any comments on the rent and live compared to now in regards to these articles?http://tinyurl.com/255go5
mod note: edited to fix very long url that was breaking the page width. please use tinyurl.com when you have very long addresses (like almost any times' address). thanks!
Comments
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I lived in a 1 bedroom walk-up on 13th between 1st and A in 1988 - the rent was $550/month - I was one of the very few Anglos on a mostly Latino block. In the summer the folks on the block would bring an old movie screen out and show movies on an old fashion projector. Cold beer was served out of tubs filed with ice. Music filled the block most summer nights.
But....the super of my building was a crack dealer and actually cooked up crack (baking soda and cocaine) in the basement of the building. Crack was sold openly on the street along with other drugs. Tompkins's Sq park was a have for users and dealers. I saw a guy get shot while talking on the phone in a phone both on the corner of 10th and A - shot 3 times in a drive by. Crime was rampant.
It was the best of times and the worst of times... -
Slightly later than the '80s, but I was in a 2-bedroom walkup on 13th between 2nd and 3rd in '92 and my rent was $250... but that was an illegal sublet, not to mention completely overrun with roaches and with the walls basically falling down around me, with three crackhouses on the block, and... eh, I'll stop there. You get the idea.
Shortly after that I moved into a not-quite-3-bedroom walkup (as in one room had no window and thus was legally a den or something, but for our purposes it was a bedroom) on the LES (Clinton between Rivington and Delancey) for $1100. The apartment was in considerably better condition than the one above, and there were no crackhouses that I knew of, but there were very prominent heroin dealers at Clinton and Houston, who I guess were gone by the time Wylie Dufresne opened a restaurant there a few years later. Mostly I just remember the ever changing "brand" names of what they were selling. They seemed to go in thematic waves, like luxury cars (Lexus, Porsche, etc.) or Truth in Advertising (Coma, Death, etc.) Call me a babe in the woods, but I didn't realize that heroin was actually branded until I moved there.
Best and worst of times, indeed. Though I guess the late 70's/early 80's were, uh, bester/worster. -
I lived in a nice one bedroom apt. on 144th Street between between Broadway and Riverside Drive from 1985 to 1987. Rent was $285/month.
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In the 1990s, my previous Upper East Side studio's monthly rent was $600. I'm guessing that the same studio's monthly rent is at least $1300 today.
I have friends renting in Alphabet City (close to Avenue C) today that are paying $1400 for teeny studios that lack sufficient windows and kitchen space. -
Livetotravel wrote: I lived in a 1 bedroom walk-up on 13th between 1st and A in 1988 - the rent was $550/month - I was one of the very few Anglos on a mostly Latino block. In the summer the folks on the block would bring an old movie screen out and show movies on an old fashion projector. Cold beer was served out of tubs filed with ice. Music filled the block most summer nights.
I can't argue with that. At the same time, I could not walk through your former neighborhood without being accosted by drug dealers selling needles and other treats. I once had to run like hell on Avenue C to avoid getting mugged.
But....the super of my building was a crack dealer and actually cooked up crack (baking soda and cocaine) in the basement of the building. Crack was sold openly on the street along with other drugs. Tompkins's Sq park was a have for users and dealers. I saw a guy get shot while talking on the phone in a phone both on the corner of 10th and A - shot 3 times in a drive by. Crime was rampant.
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not as old school as y'all but I had a studio in lenox terrace (doorman buildings) on 5th avenue between 132nd and 135th streets in harlem for $600/month from june 2001 - june 2003. after a brief stint in washington heights, I moved to prospect heights in march of 2004 for $900/month - the 1 bedroom I currently live in and now own.
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Subject: Re: if you're thinking of living in... NYT articles
Santa wrote: after reading the NYT about park slope from 1987 I thought it would be interesting to dig up the other articles from the 80's. The rent prices in park slope in 1987 were pretty high. They said a studio was around $800 which today with inflation is around $1500. An article about the East Village was also interesting with prices being lower than they are now but a two bedroom on Ave C going for $900 in '85 which is around $1600 today. Thats not cheap to live on C in 85. Heres the article. Anyone who lived in new york in the 80's have any comments on the rent and live compared to now in regards to these articles?
$800 for a studio in PS in 1987 sounds high, but I guess there'd be an enormous range depending on location. Not that there are many studios around here...
We had a two bedroom in what now would be called South Slope (then more clearly WT) for $800in the early 90s, and it wasn't a super special shocking Find, and it was in great shape, nice details, etc. -
My apartment in the Bronx from 1996-1998 used to be $318 per month. My wife (then girlfriend) and I used to split the rent.
That's less than a parking spot now! :shock: -
My first rent in NYC (mid 80s, Ave D and 4th St, East Village) was $165 -- that was my *half* of the $300 total that got us two teeney bedrooms, living room bathroom, kitchen, a wildly uneven floor and a drug-dealing super. A friend of mine got a comparable space, also Ave D, in the mid-90s for $1200.
crayzee. -
We moved to Boerum Hill in 1980. It was in the early stages of gentrification - Bergen, Pacific, and Dean between Smith and Bond (and to some extent down to Nevins) did not look too different from today, from the outside - they were beautiful residential blocks. Some of the brownstones closer to Nevins and down to Third were flophouses or seriously deteriorated inside. Smith Street had a couple of bodegas and the one small market near Bergen still run by a Middle Eastern family (my brain cells are dying - it starts with a Z). A lot of the storefronts were vacant. The one real odd-ball nod to gentrification was the restaurant on the corner of Bergen and Hoyt (now a bar), run by a couple who later had some success with Manhattan restaurants in the 1990s. It was a real oasis for the neighborhood; we once had a meal there cooked by Jacques Pepin.
Anyways...our first NY apartment was a duplex in an ivy-covered brownstone, fully renovated, on Bergen between Hoyt and Bond. We paid $600 a month. We were later offered the building to buy at $250K which we thought was a bit too much (oh well).
This may sound pretty great but there was a lot of petty crime in the neighborhood. Some friends were help up at knifepoint on Bergen one evening and had to give over their wedding rings. I had my purse grabbed once, and it could be kind of scary to walk down Bergen late at night in those days. -
my parents paid for sunset park basement apt aka garden floor for 500 bucks back in the 80's.
800 for 2br bensonhurst place in the 90's. -
The tiny url is linked to the wrong article here's the correct one (from the 80's):
http://tinyurl.com/3y75zn
Here's another article from the early 90's:
http://tinyurl.com/3aqzq6 -
great articles! Here's another from the NYT circa 1981, from then beat reporter Gail Collins... "'POST-PIONEER' ARRIVALS KEEP PARK SLOPE IN FLUX"
http://tinyurl.com/2ml7kh -
I moved to the South Slope in 1987. Our first apartment was a 1.5 bedroom for $600 on 7th Ave around 16th St. We moved a year later. Our second apartment was a duplex with two full bedrooms, two half bedrooms/studies and two bathrooms for $800.00 on 13th St between 5th and 6th.
I lived in a 1 bedroom basement apartment on 16th St in Chelsea. Rent = $175 from around 1981 to 1985. Prior to that, as a teenager, I lived in a one bedroom tenement apartment in the West Village with a bathtub in the kitchen. Rent = $300.00. -
thanks for posting these articles...i find them totally fascinating....
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the 81 park slope article is awesome
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Livetotravel wrote: great articles! Here's another from the NYT circa 1981, from then beat reporter Gail Collins... "'POST-PIONEER' ARRIVALS KEEP PARK SLOPE IN FLUX"
wow, thx for posting this!
http://tinyurl.com/2ml7kh
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the article from '81 has parts of it which could be from an article written yesterday.
hilarious -
Santa wrote: the article from '81 has parts of it which could be from an article written yesterday.
I think the writer is embellishing just a bit.. the phenomenon being talked about was limited to the DEEP 'North Slope' for a long time, ESPECIALLY in 1981, and even then I think the writer is exaggerating: "They created a neighborhood of children, block parties and tidy streets"? Sorry, I was there, wasn't like that.. maybe a few square blocks that fit that description, if that.
hilarious
As for the south Slope, there were still abandoned buildings and drug dens over here up the mid-90's.. you could still buy co-ops for around $50k, I know because I turned them down.
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When we moved to Fort Greene in 1995 we had a newly-renovated large 1-bedroom, 1 -bath with a working fireplace and W/D for under $800/month. A friend described the place as "as big as a basketball court" but that is a bit of an exaggeration. And, the wife and I were unemployed at the time and I simply promised the broker we would have jobs in less than a month.
Can you imagine renting an apartment on nothing more than a promise today? -
I don't have 1980s stats, but in '96 I paid $847 for a very nice studio w/ deco details on 65th & Madison (I had to have been the poorest person around). I'll bet that apartment goes for over $2K now. Then I shared a real 3-bedroom (small rooms, but nice) in the heart of the West Village - my rent was $630.
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Santa wrote: the article from '81 has parts of it which could be from an article written yesterday.
Yep. When I moved to the South Slope in '87, the demarcation line had moved from the 3rd St in that article to 9th St. Now it's 16th St or Prospect Ave or even 23rd St. Who the hell knows. All I know is that
hilarious
A) It was the most diverse neighborhood in the city and
There were strollers, strollers everywhere even then. There was a BIG baby boomlet around 88/89. There were waiting lists for the "better" nursery schools. You needed to register at birth and I didn't have a chance of getting my kids into them and
C) Park Slope "proper" was too expensive for me. It still is, the lines have just changed a bit. -
how did rents relate to yearly earnings. Paying $600 in 1987 seems cheap but how much were people making when paying these rents.
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[quote="Santa"]
Yep. When I moved to the South Slope in '87, the demarcation line had moved from the 3rd St in that article to 9th St. Now it's 16th St or Prospect Ave or even 23rd St. Who the hell knows. All I know is that
A) It was the most diverse neighborhood in the city and
Really? Park Slope? Really? Most of what I've read on neighborhood diversity in NYC in the 1980's cite Elmhurst, Queens as the most racially diverse neighborhood with residents representing over 100 countries at the time. And Sugar Hill in Harlem has always been one of our most diverse neighborhoods. I'm really surprised to hear that Park Slope was considered among the "most." -
1990: Windsor Place and 8th ave....3 bedroom plus small extra room, roof deck....$900. Added bonus: across the street from Gus and Yolanda's bodega...some of the nicest folks in the south slope. (She would actually call to remind us to move our car for alternate side)
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Santa wrote: how did rents relate to yearly earnings. Paying $600 in 1987 seems cheap but how much were people making when paying these rents.
this may be helpful in a very, very broad way. Don't forget to re-calculate past rents too, http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
real wages by year.
http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Wages+and+Benefits:+Real+Wages+(1964-2004) -
When my mom and moved to Brooklyn Heights in 82 or 83, we had a 2 bedroom for $500 on Hicks Street between Pineapple and Orange. I shudder to think what it's going for now.
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^^ yeah ive been using the inflation calc to get an idea but it doesnt focus specifically on NYC. If there were no high paying jobs then 600 bucks a month when making 12,000 can be brutal.
my rent right now may be high but Im getting paid more for my job than if I lived in Bozeman, MT. -
Livetotravel wrote: I'm really surprised to hear that Park Slope was considered among the "most."
Yeah, it was. And knowing Park Slope now, I can understand why you would be surprised. -
my first apartment in park slope (2.5 years ago) was a 4 bedroom duplex on 4th ave and 11th st. Cost $550 a month per person, had a great backyard/patio with ivy covering the entire wooden fence. of course only 1 bedroom had a window, and the family across the hall (with all 5-11 kids, depending on the day of the week) was somewhat dirty, causing cockroach infestations every month or so (our kitchen pipes were linked--completely unavoidable!), i was still impressed that I somehow lived in the neighborhood for half the rent most people pay.
great price, but I sure do love windows and cleanliness.
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