Zaveri, Mihir. “Rents Surge in New York City at Double the National Rate.” The New York Times, 7 Mar. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/nyregion/nyc-rent-surge.html.
Summary:
In the article, “Rents Are Roaring Back in New York City”, author Mihir Zaveri tells us that with the effects of the pandemic receding, major cities are regaining their appeal, fueling a nationwide surge in housing costs pushing residents out of their homes. Zaveri introduces us to a woman named Gabbie Fried who was renting a one-bedroom apartment for $1945 in the upper west side. Due to rent increase, when she got her lease renewal at the end of the month her rent went up by $800. In New York, renters make up two thirds of all households and between 2021 and 2022 rent rose 33 percent which is double the national rate. Nancy Wu, an economist partnered with real estate website StreetEasy stated, “We’re seeing that rents have returned and basically surpassed where they were prepandemic”. Rent has been fluctuating in more wealthier neighborhoods such as Williamsburg and the Upper West Side with a sharp 20 percent decrease at the start of 2020 and 2021 and within the last year an increase of around 40 percent making rent higher than it was before the pandemic. Zaveri ends the article sharing the frustrations tenants experienced with landlords making unreasonable increases to rent with many of them eventually moving out.
Reflection:
I can agree on a majority of the article. Rent has increased since the pandemic and I personally have moved since then. Even in my new apartment our rent is significantly higher than our old place. We pay $500 more than what we paid at our old place. The rent costs around my old neighborhood and even within my own were rising and my building which wasn’t renovated or repaired, but more people were moving out than in. A lot of my neighbors started to disappear month after month with the increase in rent being the main cause. Going back to my research question, living costs have gone up with rent being the biggest cost that is directly affecting people. I currently live in Coney Island which is lower income neighborhood and rent is still $400 higher than what it used to be. Zaveri says,” But the increases have underscored the city’s chronic and worsening problems with affordability, pushing many New Yorkers into desperate negotiations with landlords or simply to leave”. I can completely agree with this as since minimum wage has gone up, more and more things have become unaffordable like bus fares and groceries. I think I should look more into the affordability for landlords to possibly understand why they have marked up prices so high within the last year.
The author Mihir Zaveri uses a tone of concern while giving statistical evidence showing the struggles of tenants and the difficulties the people of New York have been dealing with during the pandemic. The author wants this to reach the people of New York while also showing outsiders the reality of living in the city. The genre of this article is an informational report directed at housing costs in New York. It give the author the ability to give readers info based on his subject using facts and statistics which is beneficial to both him and the reader. I know this is a credible article because it was published by the New York Times which is the highest ranked news company known for their factual unbiased reports.
Notable Quotes:
“After the pandemic swept in two years ago, rents in New York and several other major American cities plunged, as fear of the virus and the lockdown of urban economies prompted waves of people to leave. But with the virus receding and a sense of normal life slowly returning, many big cities are regaining their appeal, helping fuel a nationwide surge in housing costs and pushing some residents out of homes they can no longer afford.”
“Rents in New York rose 33 percent between January 2021 and January 2022, according to the online listing site Apartment List, almost double the national rate and the highest increase among the 100 largest American cities tracked by the group.”
