Saturday, October 08, 2005
Mike's Money Touts Accomplishments...
Mike Bloomberg for NYC | Accomplishments: Housing0 comments
This is what Mike Bloomberg is running on? Whew...
Lordy...lordy...lordy.
His business acumen is unchallenged. But his political prowess needs a bit of work here, we see. Housing would be the single issue that he should need a Congressional subpoena shoved in his face before he would let anyone close to him talk about.
I guess all the money in the world can't buy you political savvy.
"All politics is local."
And nothing is more local than your home.
The ability to pad down the hallway to the bathroom in the night in a relaxed, secure and private manner moves more mountains than all the explosives on earth.
Mike, of Mike's Money fame, and his well-heeled cronies have overseen an unprecedented housing redistribution here in the city.
"And the rich get richer,
And the poor get poorer --
A-ringy-dingy, cha-cha-cha!
Pa-dap. Dum."
And the middle class just goes away...
Astute business people all, Mike and his friends fully understand the laws of supply and demand.
New York City has a finite land supply. There is only so much land within the five boroughs. So the smart money is always in upping demand. If you can create enough demand, there are untold riches to be gained here.
New York's leaders have been aware of this for centuries. Which is why NYC has always been in the forefront of careful urban management. The pressures of greed, utilizing basic economic theory, have always been enormous here. So historially, the city's leaders have forged basic levels of regulation to keep these outsized pressures in check, in order to maintain core demographic balance and habitability.
A prime case in point: the city's history of regulating its apartment rental stock. Greed has always been a player here, so regulation has always been needed. And always undergone bitter attack. But the tenant lobby is strong. So, New York's unique version of a "Green (money) movement" has only been able to chip away at the regulations, not scuttle them altogether.
Mike and his friends have creatively skirted this roadblock by refueling demand for apartment sales, and have supplied that demand by skimming more and more apartments from the city's rental stock, and throwing them out for sale. As a testament to their collective genius, this approach has creatively propelled runaway inflation in both the sales AND rental markets.
It's created the perception that there's an increased supply for the sales market (which, of course, was never enough to actually supply current demand—although it did work in getting the upscale crowd drooling and spending), while simultaneously fueling an explosion in the price of rental apartments.
Due to decreased supply.
Oh.
D'uh!
Brilliant.
This well-choreographed marketing campaign for the shell game was still far out-stripped by the Mayor's support for white-collar service-sector corporations' bringing in a flood of well-paid, career ladder-climbers who still naively believe that paying overly inflated prices for their apartments is "a sound investment," and that an apartment that drops from $1.7 MILLION to $1.3 MILLION is "a steal!"
[Now, why anyone on God's Green Earth would think that some young, upwardly mobile man or woman who thinks this way is somehow qualified to manage MY MONEY or legal affairs, is totally beyond me. But that's for another post.]
The apartment-for-sale market has now begun to cool a bit. So, it's down to an average price of slightly OVER $1 MILLION to buy an apartment here now.
And this cooling of the bubble has heated up the rental market. The New York Times and the Westside Spirit (the upscale crowd's "hometown paper," founded in the mid-'80s during the Yuppie plague) have both recently run articles touting the rental market as "the smart alternative" to a hopelessly expensive sales picture.
Even the young MBAs among us will note that this has begun fueling more runaway excess in the rental market. Non-regulated apartments now easily top $7,000 a month.
That's $7,000 a month to rent an apartment.
With bad pipes. With roaches. With screaming (although, increasingly well-heeled) neighbors.
Yes, ever the astute businessman, Mike has helped produce these overheated real estate markets. But, ever the inexperienced politician, he's accomplished this by pricing out of the city the preponderance of working class and middle class people who make this city run, and who doggedly vote for Republicans against their better economic interests.
Young starry-eyed, upwardly mobiles tend not to vote as a demographic. Nor do CEOs. But tenants do. Religiously.
And no Bush-like terrorism scare campaign will deter them.
Mike's accomplishments have changed the very idea of New York. They've destroyed most every vestige of uniquely New York character we've had left after enduring the real estate giveaways under Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani. There's precious little difference left these days between New York City and any mall in Toledo.
And, ladies and gentlemen, THAT is quite an "Accomplishment."
Definitely one worth bragging about on your official web site.
posted by Gotham 2:55 PM
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