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The NY Times examines the phenomenon of more Manhattan families who opt to stay in cramped apartments, instead of moving to bigger homes in the 'burbs. One example is a internist and a labor nurse (plus two kids) living in a $3,995/month Greenwich Village rental--though spacious, there's a "queen-size bed, a crib, a toddler bed and a dresser" wedged in the sole bedroom. Then there's a Lower East Side couple who gave up their bedroom for their two kids (the couple sleeps in a former closet). Census data says there are more white, white-collar families living in one bedroom apartments; Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge explains, "Oftentimes both parents are working and have lives in the city and don’t want to commute in and then worry about having to get back home. There is a much bigger traction to city life.”
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Great, the children suffer because their parents want to retain their long-gone 20-something social lives. Pretty typical of this generation of adults who never grow up, kids and responsibilities be damned.
I love the city, but I can't even imagine doing this. I'm glad I live in my 2 bedroom condo in a suburban/rural area of PA, & can visit NYC 2 hours away whenever I want.
Another problem of society today is everyone wants everything. I want to have children and still keep my career and work.
#1 is mistaken. It's not for their own social lives that parents do this. It's so they can see more of their children. I lived in Westchester when my children were young. They didn't see their father until 8 or 9 pm. My career was derailed. Now I live in Battery Park City, and see how much better these young families are doing. The parks are filled with fathers playing with their children in the parks in late afternoon and early evening. Mothers and fathers meet their children for lunch. It is all much more normal. As for the cramped living? It's more like most of the world than the McMansions in our suburban sprawl. I don't think you have enough experience to warrant being so judgmental. I am grateful to these families for living more sustainable lives (that benefit all of us) and for raising their children well.
Lower-manhattan, you sound like a real estate broker.
But anyway, see more of their children who live in 1908 tenement conditions. Kids who lived in 1br apartments out in spacious Brooklyn tell the horror stories about growing up ... I wonder what these kids will say about their parents in 20 years.
If you want to raise a family in Manhattan, live in apartment that fits a family, not a 1br designed for a single person or a childless couple.
That's an awfully peachy way to turn this lower Manhattan. I'm fairly certain the majority of those fathers you see in parks live in 2BR apartments and don't have two kids living in their bedroom. Imagine the havoc this must bring into the sexual lives of parents (even beyond that of normal child-rearing). Just because some other places in the world live like this doesn't mean we necessarily should. I've had my doubts whether people are even really meant to live in cities like New York...
Uh, why can't these people just live somewhere other than a 1-bedroom overpriced Manhattan apartment or the suburbs. Pretty afforable spaces in much of Brooklyn and Queens that is close... and your kids get to sleep in another room. Maybe they are just snobs?
this is news? see tenements.
unfrigginbelievable. oh to be rich and privileged.
They must have great sex lives.
Why not live in queens if you want a house and live in the city...?
I guess it's not hip enough. Or something. I dunno.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you make it harder to build housing by down zoning. More people are going to end up living like this.
Also I visit my sister in westchester and the commute is a hop skip and a jump. The only reason I can imagine parents wanting to be lower middle class in manhattan is because they want the social life that the city affords them.
If you're paying close to $4,000 in rent for a small apartment, and you have kids, you're probably just a selfish person. In a good neighborhood in Brooklyn or Queens, you can easily get a nice apartment near a subway with a lot more space for the kids.
And of course this all illustrates just how out of whack the price of housing is in NYC. $4000 a month and you can't even own a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment.
It's all about having a Manhattan address even if they can't afford it. Stupid and phony!!!
Why is this news? This is how working class families have lived for years. When there isn't enough money for a larger apartment or there are relatives that are taken into the household, kids end up sharing rooms. It's not the best setup, but it certainly happens.
Having said that, I can't imagine why anyone who can afford a $4000/month rent would be idiotic enough to cram their entire family into one bedroom, instead of trying to find a larger apartment elsewhere. Even in Manhattan you can do better than that. Or divide off part of the "spacious" living room as a separate space for the kids, or something.
My friends just moved into the atelier which is a luxury condo on west 42nd street and their apartment is breathtaking. They had a 1000 square feet of pure HDTV's, and cosmopolitan candace bushnell young couple bliss. It looked ten times better than any cover page of a crate and barrel catalog. then they had a baby and now it's ruined. Babies are the worst STD's known to mankind. They will probably have to move to a townhouse in NJ or brooklyn or else be forced live like a chinese family in a cargo hold.
For 4 G's they can BUY a large place in Queens or Brooklyn near a train that takes them straight to work.
Talk about throwing your money away AND giving your kids a disadvantage. Buy and build up some equity you bozos.
Westchester is like 20 minutes away. It's faster from Yonkers into Midtown than from my apartment in Brooklyn.
I think the people mentioned in this article don't live in queens because they're not urban enough for it. That would mean their kids would have to consider urban schools outside of manhattan and have to deal with "real" new yorkers of whom these people have probably never met.
These people are just mad at their parents for forcing them to grow up in clean safe environments in the suburbs and now are taking it out on their children to show how real and authentic they are.
what a bunch of deluded weirdos.
In Jersey City you could find an apartment with 3 bedrooms, washer/dryer in unit, pool and playground for the kiddies, gym and a sauna for less than what they are paying now. And they could probably be standing in Greenwich Village 10 minutes after walking out their front door via PATH. Crazy.
The situation in itself is not news at all. Families everywhere are forced to do this, but then again they are probably not paying 4k a month, on rent alone.
What is wrong with these people? I agree, they are probably just snobs that would rather live like that than be seen elsewhere outside of Manhattan... sorry, my mistake, "the city".
Other alternatives are eliminating the living room and turning it into bedrooms. Don't even have to built, maybe fake walls. Kids sharing rooms are not that big a deal, but sharing it with their parents past 1 year is not good for either of them.
News flash to them: you won't be able to keep doing it for long. Kids do grow. :/
I suspect a LOT of the men you see with their kids in Battery Park are unemployed financial workers. Go into any Starbuck's and you'll see all the former white-collar earners "networking". It's sad.
Also, people better get used to this sight. This is what we may have to end up living in. Not so long ago, I saw a book about small apartments and the way architects are building and designing is unbelievable.
Everything is foldable. The bed is a sofa or else hidden in the wall. I wish I could remember the title now...
I think it is interesting that there is a segment of people now who to choose to live this way rather than it being out of necessity.
Sometimes, I still can't grasp the fact that my father, aunt, grandmother, and grandfather shared the bedroom that I now have my queen size bed in. When my grandfather died, my grandmother slept on the fold-out couch in the livingroom and left the bedroom to the children. (and yes, my dad and his sister shared the room until they were young adults and my dad left for college).
My grandparents were working class (housemaid and floor cleaner) and this living situation was out of necessity).
"The situation in itself is not news at all. Families everywhere are forced to do this, but then again they are probably not paying 4k a month, on rent alone."
Right. The story isn't "people live in cramped conditions." That's no story at all. The story is "people with $4,000/month to spend on rent choose to live in cramped conditions because they're too snooty to move out of Greenwich Village."
Everyone telling them to buy: Um, are you not paying attention to what's going on? Now's not the time for (almost) anyone to buy. Rent until the prices come down further and further.
"They will probably have to move to a townhouse in NJ or brooklyn or else be forced live like a chinese family in a cargo hold."
Yes, because that's what we all do in Brooklyn. Exactly. Hey, if twits are so hell bent on going broke that they want to stay cramped in Manhattan and pay extraordinary amounts of money instead of (ohnos!) living in another section of the exact same city -like Queens/Brooklyn/Bronx or even Staten Island (the horror!) where you'd get LOADS more space and for less money, then go for it. Stay in your precious Manhattan and also outta Brooklyn, we're full up.
I'm amused by how many people criticize people living in these conditions, yet these same people will criticize any development that increases housing density (thereby increasing overall housing stock and ultimately leading to lower prices for everyone).
Growing up in a single-parent household my mom worked three days a week and slept on a foldout couch in the living room so I could have the one bedroom in the apartment. But that was 30+ years ago in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn and the rent was $250. I admire parents who sacrifice for their kids like that. But if you're dishing out $4000/month you can definitely do better. I don't know if they're sacrificing for their kids or just sacrificing their kids.
ChampionOfTheSun and roe: that's exactly what I said in the Curbed thread about this article. $4000/month would get you a MUCH larger apartment in other parts of the city (in fact, even in other parts of Manhattan -- below 96th Street too, if that's so important!).
I mean, the West Village is great, but $4000/month for a 1 BR when you've got two kids is nothing but shallow grandstanding at the expense of the kids.
If the parents both work outside the home and the kids are studying and playing elsewhere until the evening, living in a 1BR apartment isn't the big deal most folks are painting this as.
These kids are going to adjust to college life and then congregate life with roommates much better than the kids who expect total privacy and the ability to take a half-hour shower because no one is waiting.
I kind of can't believe how negative everyone's being about this. I'm living in a one bedroom in Manhattan with my husband, my dog and my toddler, with another baby due any day. We choose not to move out to the suburbs - sorry, but Westchester is hardly a "hop and a skip" - for a variety of reasons. First, we love our apartment and our neighborhood. Second, we have family within walking distance - great for the baby and critical given that my work hours are often long and unpredictable. That leads to reason #3 - I think it's better for my child to see me as much as possible than for him to be thinking about me while I'm on a 60 to 90 minute "hop and a skip" to work in the morning and again back home at night. Reason #4 is also about him - the baby gets out every day to playgrounds, stores, etc with his dad (who is a fireman, thank you, not a laid off Wall Streeter headed home to his 2BR) or his grandparents. He loves seeing people, buses, dogs, police horses - all the things he runs into - and I think it's great for him. He loves every minute. So no, it's not for the social life - we're not headed out to fancy restaurants or clubs every night - and it's not because we're not "urban" enough, since we're both native Brooklynites. We love our life right smack where it is and don't need the all the junk that fills a massive house in the suburbs. And I'm sure there are very nice areas in Bklyn and Queens, but it's awfully simplistic to say we'd be having the same experience in any of them.
You people are so funny. I live in an a one bedroom apartment with my 4 yr old daughter. Thanks to IKEA She has the master bedroom and we share a closet because my husband and I don't have a ton of clothes and we space bag out of season clothes.
I love how our country is in a financial crisis and foreclosure frenzy yet you morons knock people for living WITHIN their means instead of buying a home with bedrooms for EACH child and then a guest room and an office and a three car garage. People you are glutons. Our living room looks like a living room until it is time for bed then it is our bedroom all of our furniture works for day use just like yours and then at bedtime it is bedroom furniture (no not some crappy dorm room futon) You people that knock us for living within our means are morons you really are!!! Because we choose to not make our children's lives filled with our debt and have things we DON"T need that shows our children to appreciate what they have and take care of it. Our daughter has the BEST clothes and the BEST toys but SHE appreciates them. I still have my "office" and my everything. I just learn to clean up after myself ASAP instead of putting it off and she learns that too. Small space and a little clutter is suffocating so you pick up after yourself and the space is perfect. Too bad for you people that were raised to be pigs and want EVERYTHING. I don't live in New York or Chicago (I was raised in CHicago it is too dang cold there) I live in Las Vegas...I live in the most extravagent place in America and I live more and worry less. Perhaps instead of thinking oh poor kids, keep in mind OUR children do more and see more and live more than your kids in your forclosed homes with the BIG HUGE "foreclosure sale" sign out front for all their friends too see. LMAO Suck it up people you did that too yourselves some of us are smart enough to know Pay Cash not credit....Buy what you Need and live life like you want the more you spend in rent/mortgage and STUFF the less you get to travel and the less diverse lives your children will live!!!
Do any of you that are knocking the 4,000 a month price tag on the apartmet understand that the cost of living is generally relative to the pay for the area??? Perhaps in Kansas you won't get it. Even my husband for example who works a trade job in Las Vegas he is only paid 40.00 an hour in New York would be around 65-70 an hour. Our apartment is only 1900.00 a month here and we look out on the strip but I would NEVER want to live in the neighborhoods....what with the nosey a$$ Home Owners Association and the neighbors houses within arms reach and able to look into their homes and vice cersa because it is so close. No thank you and here ALL the houses are three shades of beige (you have to watch the real houswives of the OC to get that one) in the desert areas we only have 3 of the same styles of home only difference is the area they are in. I don't want to pay 400,000- one million dollars for the same house that the family lives in across the street or the same style across town in Sunrise Mountain for 180,000 with lower qaulity appliances. Its not worth it. We get 7,000 new residents a month here every month and we have more vacant houses here from you people that thought you NEEDED them when in fact your kids would have been happy seeing mommy and daddy NOT worrying about money and crying when the repo company came for the car you couldn't afford and then the home that the bank came and kicked you out of and the victims you made them because you had to impress your neighbors and were insecure so you filled that insecurity with things and now you have nothing but a FOR RENT magazine and now those places won't rent to you because you credit sucks and you have a foreclosure and repo on your credit with an up and coming bankrupcty. Was it worth it??????? We feel sorry for YOUR kids...because you were all selfish!