How was it that New York City was "cheap" back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s?

[destroycreate]

You always hear stories about NYC during the "Taxi Driver" era, where people could live and rent cheaply as bohemian artists in Greenwich Village etc., i.e. when Madonna was a backup dancer who worked at Dunkin Donuts, and yet today we know NYC, specifically Manhattan, is prohibitively expensive. Given its always been the biggest and more important city in America economically, what factors played into making it a somewhat affordable place for creatives, working class families, and middle class people from the 70s-90s? It seems that after 1998 or so, this changed irrevocably. Was it much to do with Giuliani's ability to "clean up" the city and reduce crime that invited upper class people back?

[skyscraperpage17]

The city suffered from a severe financial crisis during the 70s (due to a combination of white/wealth flight and gross mismanagement) that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy meant no city services (such as police patrol), which meant things such as crime got entirely out of hand. So everyone with the means to do so got out of Dodge as quickly as they could.

Thus, the law of supply and demand kicked in. With so many people fleeing the city, there was ample housing available which put a ton of downward pressure on the amount that landlords could charge tenants, as well as how much homeowners could expect to sell their houses for.

In some ways, it wasn't too dissimilar to Detroit's situation today / past several years.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

You always hear stories about NYC during the "Taxi Driver" era, where people could live and rent cheaply as bohemian artists in Greenwich Village etc., i.e. when Madonna was a backup dancer who worked at Dunkin Donuts, and yet today we know NYC, specifically Manhattan, is prohibitively expensive. Given its always been the biggest and more important city in America economically, what factors played into making it a somewhat affordable place for creatives, working class families, and middle class people from the 70s-90s? It seems that after 1998 or so, this changed irrevocably. Was it much to do with Giuliani's ability to "clean up" the city and reduce crime that invited upper class people back?

Do you have Netflix? Do yourself an immense favor and watch the four part mini documentary "Hip Hop Evolution". When they said "the Bronx is burning", they meant it literally.

The usual mix of decaying infrastructure, lack of jobs, white flight - like all the other urban centers in the Northeast and Midwest at the time - made NYC affordable in the 70s. Crack cocaine is by and large the reason why big swaths of NYC continued to be affordable throughout the 80s and early 90s.

[chris08876]

About 10% of the population was lost during the 70's decade. Rampant crime, a horrid economy... the city was almost in a state of bankruptcy. Things like debt didn't help either.

If I could teleport back to the 70's, I'd buy a crap load of properties. If only we knew! Especially in parts of Brooklyn. That same property, 100-300k is now 3-4 million.

[dc_denizen]

indeed the city was far cheaper, before the dark times of gentrification

[Crawford]

NYC was far cheaper than today, but was never really "cheap". Excepting the worst years of the 70's, prime real estate was pretty painfully expensive, really since NYC's founding.

Even as early as 1980, luxury apartments had recovered and went for millions in 2018 numbers. Now the least desirable real estate, places like Brownsville and parts of the South Bronx, had very low property values until recently.

If you're asking why real estate was so cheap during the mid-70's, I think it's fairly well-known that NYC underwent a shocking, precipitous decline, pretty much unmatched in the developed world at that point. In maybe a decade it went from planet's unchallenged hegemon to basically near-death.

[chris08876]

I recommend this documentary:

This is episode 8, which covers 1945 to 1979.

• Video Link


Whole series, a 9 episode documentary called "New York: A Documentary Film". Originally released on PBS, but I'd highly recommend it. Best NY documentary out there.

You can get all the episodes on youtube. IF you haven't seen it before, just watch 5 minutes of this clip and you'll be hooked.

[McBane]

Originally Posted by Crawford

NYC was far cheaper than today, but was never really "cheap". Excepting the worst years of the 70's, prime real estate was pretty painfully expensive, really since NYC's founding.

Even as early as 1980, luxury apartments had recovered and went for millions in 2018 numbers. Now the least desirable real estate, places like Brownsville and parts of the South Bronx, had very low property values until recently.

If you're asking why real estate was so cheap during the mid-70's, I think it's fairly well-known that NYC underwent a shocking, precipitous decline, pretty much unmatched in the developed world at that point. In maybe a decade it went from planet's unchallenged hegemon to basically near-death.

This is interesting. I've always wondered how NYC's 1 percenters fared during this time. Did a large subset flee to their homes in their Hampton's?

[jd3189]

Surprisingly, that era of NYC's history is my favorite for a variety of reasons. First off, I was born in the city at that time and it was also when my family came to the US. It was a time when new arrivals were beginning to come in, making the city more diverse and unique. Pretty much the rise of the urban contemporary culture like hip hop/rap, punk rock, bohemian, etc. Despite the crime, which went down in the 90s, New York was more interesting then than it is now with gentrification sucking the soul out of once middle class/ lower economic class neighborhoods. If prices and stuff stayed the way they were in the 90s with low crime, etc, I would move back and stay permanently.

[SpongeG]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Do you have Netflix? Do yourself an immense favor and watch the four part mini documentary "Hip Hop Evolution". When they said "the Bronx is burning", they meant it literally.

The usual mix of decaying infrastructure, lack of jobs, white flight - like all the other urban centers in the Northeast and Midwest at the time - made NYC affordable in the 70s. Crack cocaine is by and large the reason why big swaths of NYC continued to be affordable throughout the 80s and early 90s.

I think I saw that one but on youtube, it was really good and packed with information, amazing how rundown the city was in the 70's and 80's, surprising that the 90's were still home to abandoned properties etc in the east village cause now its all totally different.

[austlar1]

The 60s were probably the last decade where it was possible to find (unless you got lucky and scored a rent controlled apartment) a cheap place to live in Manhattan. You could still get very basic (I mean really basic) housing in places like the Lower East Side or East Village for under $100 a month. Other neighborhoods like Chelsea, Hells Kitchen, the east 20s and 30s, and big swaths of the Upper West Side had lots of affordable places. I rented a large studio in 1967 on West 88th Street between West End and Riverside in an old brownstone (the apartment was the former dining room of the house and still had original wainscotting and wooden shutters. There was also a grubby kitchen and private bath to the rear of this rather grand room. I peeled back several layers of linoleum in the apartment to discover an intricately detailed parquet floor, and my landlord was actually kind of pissed at me for making an unauthorized improvement! My rent was $125 a month including utilities and water (with no lease/landlord kind of sketchy),which, adjusted for inflation, amounts to about $900 today. That doesn't seem especially cheap, but $125 felt like a steal back in 1967. That same brownstone was converted back into a single family residence several years ago and sold recently for over $4,000,000! It seems to me that cheap housing became increasingly scarce in Manhattan by the early 1970s. Certainly it was cheap by today's standards, but it never felt like there were bargains to be had in Manhattan after about 1970.

[tablemtn]

The New York Magazine archives on Google are pretty interesting for this kind of stuff. There were a lot of articles about crime back in the 70's, for example:

Seven Days of Killing

from the August 28, 1972 edition.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by austlar1

The 60s were probably the last decade where it was possible to find (unless you got lucky and scored a rent controlled apartment) a cheap place to live in Manhattan. You could still get very basic (I mean really basic) housing in places like the Lower East Side or East Village for under $100 a month. Other neighborhoods like Chelsea, Hells Kitchen, the east 20s and 30s, and big swaths of the Upper West Side had lots of affordable places. I rented a large studio in 1967 on West 88th Street between West End and Riverside in an old brownstone (the apartment was the former dining room of the house and still had original wainscotting and wooden shutters. There was also a grubby kitchen and private bath to the rear of this rather grand room. I peeled back several layers of linoleum in the apartment to discover an intricately detailed parquet floor, and my landlord was actually kind of pissed at me for making an unauthorized improvement! My rent was $125 a month including utilities and water (with no lease/landlord kind of sketchy),which, adjusted for inflation, amounts to about $900 today. That doesn't seem especially cheap, but $125 felt like a steal back in 1967. That same brownstone was converted back into a single family residence several years ago and sold recently for over $4,000,000! It seems to me that cheap housing became increasingly scarce in Manhattan by the early 1970s. Certainly it was cheap by today's standards, but it never felt like there were bargains to be had in Manhattan after about 1970.

That sounds about right. Before that, the Park Avenue "silk stocking district" would have stayed wealthy right through the postwar years but most of Manhattan was pretty low income (the Bronx and Brooklyn used to be a step up the ladder). I'm guessing Greenwich Village, Soho and the Upper West Side were pretty expensive even in the 1970s.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Docere

That sounds about right. Before that, the Park Avenue "silk stocking district" would have stayed wealthy right through the postwar years but most of Manhattan was pretty low income (the Bronx and Brooklyn used to be a step up the ladder). I'm guessing Greenwich Village, Soho and the Upper West Side were pretty expensive even in the 1970s.

I actually visited Greenwich Village in 1963 and spent a few nights in a Bleeker Street "flophouse" (with a group of male friends) for $1.5 a night per person as I recall. While in the city we did things like going to the Apollo Theater in Harlem to see "Smokey Robinson and the Miracles" (we were literally the only pale-faces in the place). We ate a lot of street food.

Yeah, it was grimy but for an 18 year old a lot of fun.

[10023]

In addition to everything else said, various public employee unions basically broke the city and its budget early in the Lindsay administration. That was before the population decline. The teachers, sanitation workers, transit workers... everyone went on strike, paralyzed the city, and extracted unsustainable financial terms through the late 1960s that contributed to the city’s near-bankruptcy several years later.

And no one trusted the police. They were either ambivalent or actively destructive in riots. When was it that construction workers rioted and beat up a bunch of students?

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

indeed the city was far cheaper, before the dark times of gentrification

I hope this is sarcasm.

[CaliNative]

I didn't vote for the President, but to give him his due, he did play a role in the revival of Manhattan in the 1970s and after. His purchase and revival of the old Commodore Hotel (as the Grand Hyatt) over Grand Central Station was a bold stroke, as were his many other projects.

Also important to the revival of NYC was the stock market boom that started in 1975 after the huge 1973-1974 bear market. It really did turn things around, and the bigger 1980s and 1990s bull markets really helped too. The rich became much richer, and Manhattan was the center of the booming financial universe.

Perhaps most important was the bull market in bonds. 1981 marked the top of the rate cycle (mortgages were typically above 15%). By the late 1980s, rates were cut in half, and then halved again in the next decade. It lowered the costs of mortgages, and raised the property values many times over. The era of "cheap" real estate prices was over.

And as others have said, for various reasons--demographic (fewer young people in the "baby bust" cohort), better policing, etc., crime fell and the city was perceived to be safer. This opened up places like the sketchier parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx to "yuppyfication" (the term used before "gentrification" became in vogue).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

I didn't vote for the President, but to give him his due, he did play a role in the revival of Manhattan in the 1970s and after. His purchase and revival of the old Commodore Hotel (as the Grand Hyatt) over Grand Central Station was a bold stroke, as were his many other projects.

The Grand Hyatt renovation was a taxpayer subsidized scam that converted a beautiful prewar hotel into a chintzy chain hotel. Hardly a "bold stroke" and played no role in revival of NYC. Thankfully this dump will likely soon be demolished.

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Also important to the revival of NYC was the stock market boom that started in 1975 after the huge 1973-1974 bear market.

Yes. The 1980's Wall Street boom played a huge role in the city's revival. By the early 80's, the prime neighborhoods were already very expensive, largely due to a gusher of Wall Street money.

Originally Posted by CaliNative

And as others have said, for various reasons--demographic (fewer young people in the "baby bust" cohort), better policing, etc., crime fell and the city was perceived to be safer. This opened up places like the sketchier parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx to "yuppyfication" (the term used before "gentrification" became in vogue).

Yes, but gentrification was very strong throughout the 80's, when crime was at historic peaks, and slowed down during the 90's, when crime started plummeting. I would guess economic trends are much more strongly correlated with gentrification than crime trends.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by McBane

This is interesting. I've always wondered how NYC's 1 percenters fared during this time. Did a large subset flee to their homes in their Hampton's?

A huge proportion of one percenters fled to the burbs, alongside major corporations. These were the strongest years for suburban expansion.

But Manhattan always had a massive wealth base, even in the 70's. The Upper East Side was pretty insulated by the citywide problems. The West Side, however, had issues, and the upper parts of the Upper West Side were sketchy.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

T I'm guessing Greenwich Village, Soho and the Upper West Side were pretty expensive even in the 1970s.

SoHo barely existed in the 70's. It was likely pretty sketchy. The Village was probably nice in parts (the Gold Coast areas north of Washington Square Park) and edgy in the bohemian South Village. The UWS was nice around Lincoln Center, but got sketchier as you moved north. Amsterdam and Columbus Aves were rougher than the other streets.

I think really the whole East Side was fairly desirable, though. Not just UES, but all those neighborhoods east/southeast of Midtown (so basically 14th Street to 96th Street east of 5th). Brownstone Brooklyn didn't really exist except for Brooklyn Heights (which was always nice). Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens were stable Italian areas. The rest were sketchy and somewhat unsafe.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Crawford

SoHo barely existed in the 70's. It was likely pretty sketchy. The Village was probably nice in parts (the Gold Coast areas north of Washington Square Park) and edgy in the bohemian South Village. The UWS was nice around Lincoln Center, but got sketchier as you moved north. Amsterdam and Columbus Aves were rougher than the other streets.

I think really the whole East Side was fairly desirable, though. Not just UES, but all those neighborhoods east/southeast of Midtown (so basically 14th Street to 96th Street east of 5th). Brownstone Brooklyn didn't really exist except for Brooklyn Heights (which was always nice). Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens were stable Italian areas. The rest were sketchy and somewhat unsafe.

Fascinating. No U.S. city appears to have transformed in the past 30 years like NYC.

I imagine there are still older people from the interior states who think NYC is an unsafe decrepit city. Interesting how movies and TV shows based in NYC have changed with the city. You have the 70’s represented by movies like Taxi Driver, the 80’s with movies like Big, the 90’s with movies like Home Alone 2 and shows like Friends and now the sanitized hipster or uber-expensive NY in any recent movies and shows.