New Yorkers Get Priced Out of Grocery Stores

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality, via AlterNet:




New Yorkers Get Priced Out of Grocery Stores

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted March 5, 2008.

Enormous accumulations of wealth are hitting New Yorkers where it really hurts -- at the deli counter.




In New York City, as TV's widely viewed Without a Trace series regularly reminds us, people disappear all the time. But something new, a headline revealed last week, is now disappearing in New York. Grocery stores.

Over the last six years, researchers report, the number of supermarkets in New York has shrunk by a third. Three of the city's top food chains -- D'Agostino, Gristedes, and Key Food -- "have each closed about a dozen stores since 2000."

Why are New York's supermarkets shutting down? No one needs to call in the FBI to investigate. Analysts already know the answer. New York is simply becoming too unequal -- too economically top-heavy -- to sustain the basics of modern American middle class life.

The enormous wealth now concentrated in New York has sent property prices so high that supermarkets can no longer afford to rent their urban spaces. The city's "soaring real estate values," the Washington Post notes, "are prompting property owners throughout the city to shutter grocery stores and sell to developers."

Those developers are bringing to market condos and businesses that cater to the ever-richer ranks of New York's awesomely affluent. No mystery why. These affluents have congregated in New York at levels seen nowhere else in the United States.

One telling statistic: The average weekly salary in New York County -- Manhattan -- hit $2,821 in 2007's first quarter, the equivalent of $147,000 a year. That figure over tripled, for that time period, the national average weekly take-home.

How could the average take-home be so high in New York? Credit Wall Street. In last year's first quarter, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show, the folks gainfully employed in New York's financial sector averaged an incredible $16,918 a week, a $879,736 per-year rate -- and more than enough to drive Manhattan's overall average take-home up near $150,000.

Not surprisingly, New York County now ranks as the nation's most unequal county jurisdiction. The top fifth of Manhattan's income-earners take home over 50 times the income of Manhattan's bottom fifth. Nationally, according to U.S. Census figures for 2006, top-fifth incomes outpace bottom-fifth incomes by 15 times.

Amid all this inequality, only those at the tippy top of the income ladder can afford to live stress-free and comfortably in Manhattan. The market has priced out most everyone else. If you can't afford to shell out $1 million, you haven't been able, since 2004, to afford the average Manhattan apartment. On the city's Upper East Side, apartments with three or more bedrooms average $6.6 million.

The inevitable result?

"The super rich," observes Queens College sociologist Andrew Beveridge, "are driving out the upper middle class, let alone the middle class." .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/78546/

[deadmessengers]

1. People in the outer boroughs have known this for years

Manhattan is for rich people and wannabes. There are some affordable-ish pockets in Harlem & points north, like Washington Heights and Inwood, but for the most part, the middle class lives in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. (there is some subsidized housing as well, but it's so small by percentage as to be almost negligible) And, I can tell you from personal experience (I grew up in the Bronx, and now live elsewhere) that food prices are actually CHEAPER in those outer boroughs than in much of the rest of the country.

The net is that this isn't surprising in the smallest. I mean, grocery chains charging more in wealthier areas? Yeah, that's just supply and demand right there - they only charge more because they are located near the wealthy who can afford it. If a few strivers get squeezed, so be it. This article might as well be reporting that the sky is blue or that the sun is somewhat likely to rise in the East in the morning.

[Cassandra]

2. Here in Yorkville...

which was a fairly gritty neighborhood when I got here nearly 30 years ago, we are now seeing a lot of gentrification in an originally mostly working class area. There was a restaurant, that had seemed too expensive when it opened maybe ten years ago, that moved from a corner location to a smaller space around the corner. What has replaced it is a very much more expensive Italian place with chandeliers and appetizers closing in on $20 each. I don't expect to ever go in there. Even my corner diner is getting expensive, especially for the less fattening stuff.
As for the grocery stores, people out of town are astonished when I say that Gristede's is more expensive on many items than Whole Foods. I walk across town twice a week to shop at Fairway, Westside Market, Zabar's and Broadway Farm, and go downtown twice a week to the Greenmarket, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. I cook most of my meals myself and I bless the rent rules in New York that allow me to stay here.