Talking Transition finds New Yorkers united in gloom over housing costs, job prospects

Bill de Blasio is giving his first State of the City address today at noon, and just in time for the big speech about how great we’re doing, the data collected from the polls taken at Talking Transition shows we’re maybe not doing too well. Every neighborhood in the city thinks the rent is too goddamn high, and a majority of the city thinks their economic and job prospects are bad and getting worse. Well, the optimism of the de Blasio era was nice while it lasted!

Kidding, we know that these aren’t decisions that people came to once they realized Mike Bloomberg was leaving. But, the general feeling around the city is pretty doom-y when talking about money issues. 68% of New Yorkers polled at Talking Transition said that the city’s housing situation was bad and getting worse, a sentiment that was shared in every single neighborhood across the city, even the rich ones. Manhattan neighborhoods south of 96th Street were a bit more bullish about the economy and job prospects, but they still topped out at calling it merely “okay.” Elsewhere in the city, respondents from every borough called their job prospects bad and getting worse, although respondents from Fort Greene, Sheepshead Bay and Borough Park thought things were merely bad, as opposed to hopeless.

Bed-Stuy and Park Slope got their own neighborhood profiles in the data, no surprise since one is the next Williamsburg and the other is the mayor’s former home base. In Bed-Stuy, pessimism abounds on housing and jobs issues, with 75% and 53% say those situations are getting worse respectively. On the bright side, a majority of Bed-Stuy residents polled were happy with parks, so there’s that. Park Slope is pretty bullish about the city’s future, but even there, 76% of respondents said that housing was an issue that’s bad and getting worse. And while we could snicker at that, even residents of bougie neighborhoods have a breaking point. And that breaking point apparently is $3,628/month for a two-bedroom apartment.

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