(no subject)
1/9/15 18:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyEvery time people talk about how expensive it is to live in New York, you get some people saying, "Well, just move somewhere cheaper, then, there's lots of places to live where you're not paying $1800 for a one-bedroom."
And, you know, there are a lot of reasons why this is not a feasible idea for a lot of people, including:
- The difficulty of searching for jobs long-distance, especially for lower-income-to-middle-income jobs
- The expense of a long-distance move, especially for parents
- How much poorer people depend on local social networks in emergency situations and may correctly judge that they're better off poor in an expensive place than poor in a cheap place without those social networks
And all of this is stuff that I knew before, but also
- I spent well over $500 getting myself licensed, and that's when I already had a decent amount of experience as a licensed driver. If you are starting from scratch and don't have family to teach you and lend you their car, it would be very hard to get out for under $1000.
We have a stereotype of what urban poverty looks like. But in a lot of cities, living where the rents are cheap means spending two or three or four hours a day commuting, and often buying old and cheap cars that you have to pour a ton of money into for repairs because you certainly can't be without a car and you certainly can't buy a newer one.
And I know that I'm in a position of privilege as somebody who CAN say, "Hey, rents are too expensive, I'm gonna try to go live somewhere else." But I'm still obviously not having the easiest time of it ^^;;
And, you know, there are a lot of reasons why this is not a feasible idea for a lot of people, including:
- The difficulty of searching for jobs long-distance, especially for lower-income-to-middle-income jobs
- The expense of a long-distance move, especially for parents
- How much poorer people depend on local social networks in emergency situations and may correctly judge that they're better off poor in an expensive place than poor in a cheap place without those social networks
And all of this is stuff that I knew before, but also
- I spent well over $500 getting myself licensed, and that's when I already had a decent amount of experience as a licensed driver. If you are starting from scratch and don't have family to teach you and lend you their car, it would be very hard to get out for under $1000.
We have a stereotype of what urban poverty looks like. But in a lot of cities, living where the rents are cheap means spending two or three or four hours a day commuting, and often buying old and cheap cars that you have to pour a ton of money into for repairs because you certainly can't be without a car and you certainly can't buy a newer one.
And I know that I'm in a position of privilege as somebody who CAN say, "Hey, rents are too expensive, I'm gonna try to go live somewhere else." But I'm still obviously not having the easiest time of it ^^;;
(no subject)
2/9/15 08:56 (UTC)And then you have to take time off to search for a new place, you have to put a deposit down, you need to pay rent in advance, and you usually, unless you put your things into storage or hire movers, need at least a fortnight overlap so you can deep clean the new place, move your stuff, and deep clean the old place in the hope of getting your deposit back.
But what gets me most is the well-meant advice of 'you only have to x' as if poor people haven't considered their situations and haven't done the maths and haven't explored the obvious paths (and a lot of non-obvious ones).