I know people making less than that but they are getting subsidies. It's people who are not poor enough for subsidies and not affluent that is getting squeezed
Hard agree. Cant even qualify for housing connect, medicaid, or food stamps - income tax credits (single / no kids / no property) - which are significant help to quality of life.
I'm outside of NYC, still in NY. As a single person, the 80% AGI limit is $49,000 here.
It's actually kind of painful to be barely above 100% AGI and not be able to get secure 'quality' housing up here. Everything that's being rehabilitated is focusing on low income (sub-80% AGI) limits, and everything else up here is... dire to rent. We have no real protections or anything in place up here, let alone an attempt to register rental properties that can go through without landlord revolt.
And tax credits - that was amazing when I filed my taxes through NY's direct file during the IRS pilot. I was given a "great news!" screen where it boasted that I qualified for exactly $0 for every single tax credit on offer because I couldn't own property or have a family.
Yes. People in the middle are always squeezed the hardest, and $125k is just the baseline and is below survival in NYC.
You have to cut on almost everything to keep most of that money every month. Might be fine for those without families, but for a typical family of 2 or 3 would need double that salary and employers will look at that cost and will scrutinize that and ask:
"How do we get that 'cost' (you) significantly reduced?"
That is even before talking about "AGI" which is actually an excuse for layoffs (and reposting old jobs at a lower salary and off shoring those jobs) in disguise.
So it is more like the middle-class and especially families are getting squeezed the most in NYC and have no choice but to leave the US.
> Or like. Don’t live in the 2nd most expensive city in the country?
Well... multiple things here.
If you're in, say, finance, you can't just go and move to some flyover state and work remotely. You need to be around NYC (US), LON (UK) or FRA (EU).
If you work some service job, say you work retail, okay. But... imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
It is vitally important for any city to have enough adequate housing for all levels of income, otherwise it falls apart.
I can't find the reference, but I saw a comment recently along the lines of, "If you live in a city where the people who provide you with services can't also afford to live in that city, you don't live in a city, you live in an amusement park."
If you're in finance, you earn enough to live in NYC
> imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
That's not a "the poor middle class folks in NYC need help" story, that's a "the rich folks of NYC need folks to serve them" story. They're welcome to strategize however they like to incentivize people working there. Manipulative heartstring tug are not welcome however.
> But... imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
Maybe after they have to look at piles of trash everywhere, the employers (I'm guessing that would be the city) will learn to pay them what they are worth.
Sure, there are lots of other places to live in the US that are cheaper. But if you want to live in a true major urban city, the US has managed to produce exactly one of those, with maybe an argument for Chicago followed by a few very distant also rans, despite our size and wealth and the obvious appeal to many people.
As a result, NYC like living is basically out of reach for the majority of the people who might otherwise want it. Nothing against Indiana, but if what you're looking for is bustling megalopolis living, I don't think Indianapolis is going to cut it. And your choices in the US aside from NYC are very limited.
I don't doubt that number, but it's always a bit baffling to look at the median income in expensive cities. New York city's median household income is $87k, which means that the majority of households are well below the income level it takes to live there.
This baffles me too. I don’t understand how “normal” people let alone lower income people live in places like SF/SV, NYC, etc. The math doesn’t math. Yet these cities have these people and could not function without them.
People making $80-90K can live a similar lifestyle to the people making $125K+, they just aren't saving any money. I know people that do this, live their whole life with less than $5k in the bank.
I'd argue they need significantly more than that, if they're expected to also pay for childcare, healthcare, save for emergencies, etc. This is a polycrisis we absolutely need to take seriously lest cities become cesspools again.
"Move somewhere cheaper" ignores the reality that most good jobs are in cities nowadays, not rural or cheaper areas. It also ignores decades of calculus of the "city to save, suburbs to live" mentality that's been gradually eroded away over decades of housing mismanagement, not to mention serves as a giant middle-finger for folks who, for one reason or another, MUST live in a major city (healthcare, job prospects, career field, etc). Even if someone were to move somewhere cheaper, they'd forfeit their higher salary in the process - which would likely make the newer, cheaper location just as, if not more unaffordable than their city life was; hell, some of us were trying to move somewhere cheaper in the era of remote work, and look how that turned out. Half the planet lives in cities by UN estimates, and "moving somewhere cheaper" is the most cowardly rebuttal of the problem one could muster.
I'm also shrugging off the uninformed whinging about "welfare kings/queens". Reagan couldn't prove it, two Bushes couldn't prove it, Clinton couldn't prove it, Obama couldn't prove it, two Trumps and a Biden couldn't prove it, because they don't actually exist. Talk to people actually on benefits rather than swallow naked pro-austerity propaganda by rich people angry that their tax dollars help the working poor they themselves created in the first place, and they'll tell you how impossibly difficult it is to get benefits in the first place, nevermind keeping them. There's a vastly more evidence supporting the harms of means-testing than any WFA coming from it.
At the end of the day, NYC is not alone in these problems - but is unique in having an openly Democratic Socialist as Mayor, meaning Capital has a vested interest in pinning all the ills to him and astroturfing the same austerity bullshit that worked with Reagan et al to try and defend the problems they caused in the first place. America cannot roll back to an era where six-figure salaries meant you were "rich" and five-figures were the norm, so we need to build an America where said salaries at least cover essentials again and where median incomes can afford median housing.
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It's actually kind of painful to be barely above 100% AGI and not be able to get secure 'quality' housing up here. Everything that's being rehabilitated is focusing on low income (sub-80% AGI) limits, and everything else up here is... dire to rent. We have no real protections or anything in place up here, let alone an attempt to register rental properties that can go through without landlord revolt.
And tax credits - that was amazing when I filed my taxes through NY's direct file during the IRS pilot. I was given a "great news!" screen where it boasted that I qualified for exactly $0 for every single tax credit on offer because I couldn't own property or have a family.
You have to cut on almost everything to keep most of that money every month. Might be fine for those without families, but for a typical family of 2 or 3 would need double that salary and employers will look at that cost and will scrutinize that and ask:
"How do we get that 'cost' (you) significantly reduced?"
That is even before talking about "AGI" which is actually an excuse for layoffs (and reposting old jobs at a lower salary and off shoring those jobs) in disguise.
So it is more like the middle-class and especially families are getting squeezed the most in NYC and have no choice but to leave the US.
> Or like. Don’t live in the 2nd most expensive city in the country?
Well... multiple things here.
If you're in, say, finance, you can't just go and move to some flyover state and work remotely. You need to be around NYC (US), LON (UK) or FRA (EU).
If you work some service job, say you work retail, okay. But... imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
It is vitally important for any city to have enough adequate housing for all levels of income, otherwise it falls apart.
> imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
That's not a "the poor middle class folks in NYC need help" story, that's a "the rich folks of NYC need folks to serve them" story. They're welcome to strategize however they like to incentivize people working there. Manipulative heartstring tug are not welcome however.
> But... imagine what happens to NYC when all the people doing the menial work keeping the city alive (have to) move away? Whoops, now everyone is going to drown in trash and feces!
Maybe after they have to look at piles of trash everywhere, the employers (I'm guessing that would be the city) will learn to pay them what they are worth.
As a result, NYC like living is basically out of reach for the majority of the people who might otherwise want it. Nothing against Indiana, but if what you're looking for is bustling megalopolis living, I don't think Indianapolis is going to cut it. And your choices in the US aside from NYC are very limited.
That stresses me out just to think about it.
> The math doesn’t math.
It maths fine, it's just that the assumptions being input are wrong.
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/04/mayor-mamdani...
"Move somewhere cheaper" ignores the reality that most good jobs are in cities nowadays, not rural or cheaper areas. It also ignores decades of calculus of the "city to save, suburbs to live" mentality that's been gradually eroded away over decades of housing mismanagement, not to mention serves as a giant middle-finger for folks who, for one reason or another, MUST live in a major city (healthcare, job prospects, career field, etc). Even if someone were to move somewhere cheaper, they'd forfeit their higher salary in the process - which would likely make the newer, cheaper location just as, if not more unaffordable than their city life was; hell, some of us were trying to move somewhere cheaper in the era of remote work, and look how that turned out. Half the planet lives in cities by UN estimates, and "moving somewhere cheaper" is the most cowardly rebuttal of the problem one could muster.
I'm also shrugging off the uninformed whinging about "welfare kings/queens". Reagan couldn't prove it, two Bushes couldn't prove it, Clinton couldn't prove it, Obama couldn't prove it, two Trumps and a Biden couldn't prove it, because they don't actually exist. Talk to people actually on benefits rather than swallow naked pro-austerity propaganda by rich people angry that their tax dollars help the working poor they themselves created in the first place, and they'll tell you how impossibly difficult it is to get benefits in the first place, nevermind keeping them. There's a vastly more evidence supporting the harms of means-testing than any WFA coming from it.
At the end of the day, NYC is not alone in these problems - but is unique in having an openly Democratic Socialist as Mayor, meaning Capital has a vested interest in pinning all the ills to him and astroturfing the same austerity bullshit that worked with Reagan et al to try and defend the problems they caused in the first place. America cannot roll back to an era where six-figure salaries meant you were "rich" and five-figures were the norm, so we need to build an America where said salaries at least cover essentials again and where median incomes can afford median housing.