
For a Long Life, Retire in Manhattan - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/for-a-long-life-retire-to-manhattan.html
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danso
I was pretty depressed about leaving Manhattan and at the thought that if I
ever came back, I wouldn't be as young as I was or have as many friends (many
have also left to start families elsewhere). Reading this essay reminded me of
all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single
person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but
still enjoying myself just the same. If I'm at that age where most of my close
friends and family have passed and I have the money, I would definitely love
to live my last days in Manhattan.

edit: Another characteristic of New York is the rate of change. Construction
is never finished. I still keep in touch with my roommate on FB and she's
constantly posting photos of decades-old restaurants and businesses closing
shop, and she's been in the apartment for almost 30 years. I'd have that same
disappointment/outrage when my favorite places shut down but -- as long as
they aren't replaced by sterile condos -- I've loved the variety of new stuff
that came in their stead. Living in NY definitely makes you realize that
nothing is forever and just about everything can be forgotten or replaced, and
you learn to be at peace with it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _all the days I could walk around for hours by myself, not knowing a single
> person or expecting to meet anyone I made eye contact with ever again, but
> still enjoying myself just the same._

This is one of the things I love best about the city. If I want to be alone,
but out in public, I can be. I don't have to worry about running into some
acquaintance and having to make small-talk when all I want to do is go for an
urban nature-walk.

~~~
dagw
I've very recently moved from the city to the suburbs and I've probably spent
more time making small talk with my neighbors in the past 10 days than I've
spent making small talk with my neighbors in the 10 preceding years, despite
the fact that then number of people who could be considered my 'neighbors' has
dropped by an order of magnitude.

I am really not too sure how I feel about this.

~~~
omilu
Similar situation. I realize now that the best neighbors are the ones you
never see.

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jonathanedwards
Most notable for me is when I go out to a restaurant in Manhattan I see many
tables full of grown ups and seniors having lively discussions. In SF it's
like that Star Trek episode where a virus kills off all the adults and leaves
only children.

~~~
raldi
This smells to me like confirmation bias. The actual demographic data shows SF
skews older than Manhattan:

    
    
        Population by age range, SF vs Manhattan:
        20-24:  3.8% /  7.4%
        25-34: 21.5% / 22.7%
        35-44: 16.3% / 14.6%
        45-54: 14.0% / 12.8%
        55-64: 12.4% / 11.4%
        65+:   15.2% / 14.4%

~~~
skewart
Even if SF's population "skews older" than Manhattan's, it doesn't refute the
original commenter's anecdote. Older people in SF may dine out less than older
people in Manhattan do - perhaps for financial or logistical or cultural
reasons.

~~~
HelloNurse
Or they dine out somewhere else and appear in someone else's anecdotes. Many
restaurants attract or repel specific age ranges, often as a deliberate
marketing policy: if a restaurant is full of young people it is, usually, a
restaurant for young people, for example because it plays trendy dance music
fairly loud or because it's close to a university campus.

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Jack000
As a tourist my immediate impression is that the infrastructure is quite old
compared to other world cities (why are the subways so hot?) and the touristy
areas are a lot dirtier than I would have expected. There are also some NY-
isms that I haven't seen in other American cities (terror alert levels,
garbage bags piled up on sidewalks, ubiquitous taxies, tourists literally
everywhere)

I like how it's basically a microcosm of the entire world, and you can reach
all of it without a car, but I'm not sure it's worth the inconveniences plus
3x cost of living.

~~~
rayiner
New York had one of the first subway systems in the world. It's not air
conditioned because they didn't have AC at the turn of the 20th century. The
street grid was also designed without alleys, hence the trash bags.

~~~
davidf18
Upper West Sider here: Subway cars of course have AC. Older cars sometimes
break AC but the newer ones have backup compressors so that doesn't happen.

I _do_ think they could at least have some high speed fans in parts of the
subway stations, esp. for the elderly who don't tolerate heat as well as
others.

~~~
pavel_lishin
New York City is a great place to be old and either healthy or rich.
Otherwise, you run into problems not addressed in the article - such as the
tremendous lack of handicapped access in the subways.

We lived at 145th on the ABCD line. There's precisely one escalator that takes
you from the lowest platform to the mezzanine, skipping the mid-level platform
in between. Then there are stairs to get to street-level. There are no
elevators. So when my father, in his 70s, came to visit us, he had a hell of a
time getting _down_ the stairs. We ended up specifically planning trips so
that we would arrive on the lower platform, so we could take the escalator.

All the walking does have health benefits, but if you're not capable of it,
you better live near some accessible stations, or you end up being reliant on
cars and access-a-ride (which, granted, I know nothing about - maybe it's
fantastic.)

Having typed all that, I'd rather be old and feeble here than, say, in Dallas,
where I _have_ to drive, until I'm no longer able to, and then _have_ to rely
on others for transportation. I'd gladly take a 20-minute journey down a
stairwell that takes others 20 seconds for the freedom it would afford me.

~~~
awl130
how long until self driving cars in dallas?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Probably awhile.

I can't reply to parasitius, because his comment is dead, but it's also
nonsense.

> _Just because you get to zone out all the while doesn 't mean your day isn't
> deprived of an immense amount of time._

I'm glad that Austin is working out for him, but we can't shrink all cities,
nor should we. 45 minutes of free time is still 45 minutes of free time.

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yodsanklai
I used to live in upper west side and some of the delis there looked like
retirement homes at times. I loved the diversity of cultures and generations
there. Unfortunately, not everyone is wealthy enough to retire there.

Another place where I was surprised to see lots of elderlies (many more than
in Manhattan) was Hong Kong. Many retired men hanging out in traditional
restaurants.

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somberi
For the benefit of Non-New-Yorkers:

NYC is a spread of 5 administrative sections called boroughs; Manhattan is the
smallest and Queens is the largest (5X landmass of Manhattan). 6X more people
live in the 4 outer boroughs when compared to Manhattan.

Posts below, which mention cost, often talk about Manhattan. As you might have
guessed, other boroughs tend to be cheaper and are well connected via Subway
and MTA bus systems.

More than half of New Yorkers do not own a car (ref below), and even those who
own patronise the public transport significantly for their work commute (no
data, but personal experience from having lived there many years).

If you remove the car ownership, and strain on time and resources that come
from living in the suburbs, living in NYC is cheaper, as long as you don't
consider Manhattan alone as NYC.

Ref:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_(New_York_City)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borough_\(New_York_City\))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car)

Edit: Typos and population.

~~~
bogomipz
Parts of other boroughs might be cheaper but the desirable parts of
Brooklyn(Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Williamsburg, etc) and Queens(LIC) aren't any
cheaper than Manhattan. There was a time when you could say Brooklyn was
cheaper than Manhattan but that hasn't been true in a long time.

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jkot
I think most people would have very short retirement in Manhattan. They would
run out of savings.

~~~
yodsanklai
Actually, I've always wondered how they manage to pay their bills. Of course,
there are tons of super wealthy people in Manhattan, but there are also many
elderlies that don't look particularly well-off. I suspect they've owned their
apartment for a long time, or that they pay little rent. Maybe they receive
social benefits from the city...

~~~
sotojuan
As imgabe said, a lot of older families (both in age and amount of time living
in Manhattan), at least in the Upper West Side, have rent control, are in low
income housing, or something similar.

If you ever walk around the Upper West Side, farther away from the park,
you'll see a _ton_ big, tall apartment complexes. Huge ones with hundreds of
families, if not more. I doubt everyone there makes the mid or high $100ks it
takes to rent an apartment there now as a new resident.

~~~
awareBrah
Can someone explain to me, why this exists. How come, as a new resident I need
to pay 3x the amount of rent compared to someone who has been there for a
while. As a landlord wouldn't I be mad that the going rate is much higher? Can
someone explain to me as I've never understood how come this happens or why it
is the default. Why not just have free market? Forgive if it's obvious, I
would love a lay-mans explanation

~~~
rincebrain
Rent control, as it exists in NYC, is a damper on how fast rent can rise (both
when you're in a lease, and during vacancies of a property between tenants),
for people and properties whose income/rent are below certain thresholds where
the government considers them to be either paying for or capable of paying for
luxury apartments.

Rent control lets you have some reasonable expectation that you can plan
expenses for more than a single lease term, as well as attempting to limit how
much damage to the economics of the surrounding area real estate prices are
going to do (it's a commodity that is hard to increase the supply of in any
great quantity, and demand far outstrips supply...this probably would
eventually stabilize, but it'd be quite messy in between, and probably not in
a net positive way for the city).

Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would
not go down.

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hueving
>Absent rent control, the lower bound of prices would go up, the ceiling would
not go down.

Pretty vapid statement. The ceiling is whatever the arbitrary asking price is
for something overlooking central park on the 100th floor of some high rise.
Nobody cares about the ceiling.

The question is what does it do to the market price in general for a specific
size apartment. It will cause a price decline because so many more apartments
will actually be on the market. The current price is where supply is meeting
demand so if you increase the supply the price will decline.

Of course it will screw up the people on rent control since they likely won't
be able to afford it.

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brooklyndude
The actual life expectancy in NYC is actually not too bad.

> New York City's life expectancy rate has increased by three years since
> 2001, far greater than the nationwide increase of nearly 1.8 years over the
> same period.

[https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/life-expectancy-for-
new-y...](https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/life-expectancy-for-new-yorkers-
surpasses-all-time-high/)

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susan_hall
About this:

"Certain Manhattan neighborhoods (I live in one on the Upper West Side) have
already achieved NORC (“naturally occurring retirement community”) status."

I also live on the Upper West Side. What surprises me is that everyone my
building appears to be under 40, certainly everyone is under 50. It reminds me
of when I lived in Brooklyn. But I expected it in Brooklyn. I didn't expect
such a youthful building on the Upper West Side.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Same here, for the most part - but I live in a coop, and I fully expect that
90% of its residents plan on retiring either in their current apartment, or
moving to a slightly cheaper place and subletting their current apartment to
pay for the rent.

The neighbors across from us bought two units over two decades ago, and joined
them. They're a couple with two teenaged kids, and what is almost certainly a
3-bedroom apartment that will likely be paid off by the time the kids go off
to college. I envy their awesome position :P

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cmurf
Having lived there, I always thought the same thing. The gotchas though... For
one it's a filthy city, really. Noise, light, and air pollution. Piles of
older buildings still use heating oil to operate their boilers, the soot gets
everywhere. Blow your nose, it comes out gray. But OK, OK, no place is
perfect. I think the biggest problem is on what sort of retirement plan does
someone move to NYC, Manhattan in particular, and buy or rent a place for
maybe 20 years? It's like...um?

~~~
mahyarm
Many old people downsize to a condo because:

1\. The kids are out and the house is too big for them.

2\. They are usually one floor units and have an elevator.

3\. They don't have to maintain nearly as many things.

And a place with a metro is good if you can't drive any more.

~~~
cmurf
I get all of the other logistical arguments why Manhattan works well for old
people, I've seen that first hand.

But a 1 BR condo in Manhattan is in the $3500-$4000/month range. What sized
house is that they're downsizing from? Because if it's in Colorado, that's a
5BR 4000+ square foot house. If it's Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, you've got
that on a dozen acres, with a guest house, a barn, and horses, and staff.

Median retirement income in the U.S. is ~$31k per year. So again, they're
doing this how? Great idea if you're old and reasonably wealthy. This is not
something the typical old fart is going to be doing for retirement.

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davidf18
There has been a concreted effort by the Dept of Health to improve health
outcomes beginning in 2001, so we are seeing results. MPOWER is a plan that
dramatically reduced tobacco use. There were attempts to lower the consumption
of sugar-added-beverages which significantly contributes to obesity. The legal
attempts failed, but the publicity of the legal challenges has contributed to
a decline. There are many FQHC (Federally Qualified Community Health Centers)
here so that essentially everyone has access to care (of course the elderly
have Medicare) all of these things help to increase the life expectancy in
NYC.

As pointed out by others, this is a mass transit and walking city, often the
mass transit is far faster than using one's car or a taxi (depending on the
time of day). For a Meetup I was attending a couple of weeks ago, I received
an Apple Warning to leave 40 minutes early because of heavy traffic. It took
me 15 mins by subway and a short walk.

A number of the apartments are old and the lowest of these buildings are "walk
up" eg, no elevator which also leads to lots of exercise to keep one healthy.

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agentgt
My parents are in just now in the process of retiring. They have an apartment
in NYC and a house in an expensive suburb in Boston.

One of the reasons why they are going to have to stay in NYC before moving for
some time is to continue to make additional money (ironically). They just
don't have enough money yet to retire the way they want and/or not ready to
retire. They just don't want live in the South despite my some family members
urges to.

From visiting NYC and having family live there I would gander that there are
three groups of retirees.

1\. The super wealthy that probably have another mansion somewhere else and
generally were born into money.

2\. The rise the corporate ladder but in debt most of their lives 1980's
yuppies (not born into money but have the ambition)

3\. The never left the city born and raised and probably have family owned
businesses/property.

My parents coming from absolutely zero money are from the second group.

After growing up in "privileged" areas in the ugliest smallest house in the
neighborhood with working parents I can observationally say it is amazing how
many people that are wealthy that can retire that probably didn't really earn
their wealth or at least were significantly aided. There are a lot of trust
fund retirees all over and there are a lot of retirees that want to retire
like them.

I'm not saying I know for sure the author had/has the silver spoon in his
mouth and thinks everyone can afford NYC (group 1)... but simple googling of
his name certainly paints a picture of that (his father was a medical doctor
and he went to Harvard... maybe scholarship but I doubt it).

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trungonnews
Do they live longer because they walk around more often in Manhattan?

~~~
SmellTheGlove
They live longer because you need money to live in Manhattan, and
socioeconomic status is correlated with life expectancy!

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JDiculous
You need to be rich or have a rent-subsidized apartment to retire in
Manhattan.

I love Manhattan. I've lived here for 4 years. But I'd never consider retiring
here unless I was rich enough to have a nice apartment (minimum $3,000/month
for anything decent). Even then I'm not too sure I'd stay here because the
little things do wear down on you - the dirty smelly overcrowded streets,
subway stations that are as hot as saunas in the summer, ghetto/homeless
people everywhere, constant obnoxiously loud sirens, shabby old infrastructure
and housing stock, etc.

But I do love the fact that you don't need a car, and there's an energy to
this city that I haven't experienced anywhere else. I just don't like when
people use this as an excuse to ignore its weaknesses. It's 2016 and most
people here live in old tenement buildings.

~~~
Maven911
Amen to that. I live in Astoria so I don't end up spending as much but I am
always amazed how many people buy into the greatest-city-on-earth mentality
and ignore all the shortcomings.

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almostApatriot1
There are a lot of mentality ill elderly people in NYC, and unfortunately,
many seem to be forgotten and left to their own devices. The city can
definitely be very taxing on the mind.

