Results tagged “middleclass”

The number of court cases filed by landlords over nonpayment of rent jumped about 19 percent in the first two months of 2009 from the same period last year, to 42,257 from 35,588. And lawyers, judges, and tenant advocates tell the Times that more and more middle-class renters are finding themselves in the unexpected position of facing eviction. The spectrum of "middle-class" includes a former Merrill Lynch employee thrown out of his $5,700/month Tribeca apartment (he owed $20,000 in back rent) as well as the single mom of three fighting to keep her $1,750/month apartment after losing her bookkeeping job (previously, she lost her house to foreclosure when she lost her job as a legal recruiter). Then there's Kevin Brewster-Streeks and his partner Greg Armstrong, both in their 20s and both buried in debt since Brewster-Streeks lost his $36,450 job as a records clerk at a law firm. After two bouts in housing court, they moved out of their $1,650/month Bronx apartment in February, owing nearly $7,000 in back rent. Brewster-Streeks says, "It’s kind of dehumanizing. They see you as a certain kind of person. We’ve never been that certain kind of person."

In one corner, there's Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein. In the other, middle-class parents who have been told their children have been placed on wait lists for kindergarten placement. The NY Times describes it as a "mounting...middle-class vitriol against the school system." One parent shared a letter to the Dept. of Education—"You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness"—while another recounted, "I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him. As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not... You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this. My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.” The Dept. of Education believes their approach to wait lists is fair and "will ensure that children have a placement offer by the end of June."

       

A new report from the Center for an Urban Future (whose previous report, "Attack of the Chains," sparked a bidding war between Fox and Warner Bros.) confirms the obvious: the so-called middle class can no longer afford to live in New York and are relocating in large numbers to the exburbs or far-flung cities like Houston, where $50,000 a year gets you the same standard of living as a $123,322 salary does in Manhattan. Don't scoff; Space City has theater, opera, ballet, air-conditioned skywalks, a Holocaust Museum—even a lively local weblog, just like the one you enjoy here!

Today, the NY Sun had an editorial questioning why City Council Speaker Christine Quinn remains in a $1,600/month rent-stabilized apartment, when she makes $141,000/year from the City Council, owns half a $500,000 house in NJ, and her partner is a corporate lawyer enough for their combined income to probably be at least $300,000. The editorial then looks at Governor Paterson's and Representative Charles Rangel's rent-stabilized living situations (Paterson also has a home upstate, and Rangel has a villa in the Dominican Republic). The Sun writes, "The effect is that a measure originally designed to keep the lower and middle classes from being forced out of the city has become a program that effectively subsidizes country homes outside the city for the upper middle class."