Only In New York Does $145,000 Qualify As “Middle-Income”

As some decry the plan to bring poor people into the neighborhood, a study notes that most Queens residents would not be able to afford it in the first place:

Praised as a major advance for affordable housing in Queens, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to build 5,000 middle-income rental units on the Long Island City waterfront would actually exclude more than 60 percent of Queens residents, notes a report that will be released today by the Pratt Center for Community Development.

The median income in Queens was $45,000 last year, but the income required to qualify for the new apartments would fall between $60,000 and $145,000 a year for a family of four. Rents would run from $1,200 to $2,500 a month.

Bloomberg announced his proposal for a mixed-income housing complex on 24 acres in Queens West just two days after the private sale of the 110 apartment buildings that make up the middle-class haven of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The new Queens development was hailed as the city’s largest middle-income housing development since 1974, when the 5,888-unit Starrett City was built in Brooklyn. Bloomberg promised the new project would “provide needed housing for the real backbone of our city — our teachers, nurses, police officers.”

“But the majority of teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses in Queens earn less than the $60,000 cutoff for Queens West,” pointed out Marnie McGregor, a senior policy analyst at the Pratt Center and the author of the report.

Aren’t They Just Income Tax Deductions Anyway? (No, I Mean The Kids Themselves)

Another year, another crop of Type A parents struggles with getting ahead in this competitive city:

Among some New York parent circles, it’s considered normal to spend $6,000 on a consultant to help toddlers get into private school.

The spending is spreading to public schools on the Upper West Side, where parents jostling for the seats in a few “it” schools are increasingly willing to drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get an advantage.

Maggie Ganias said she used to scoff at frantic pregnant New York City women applying to competitive private nursery schools before reaching their sixth month. She decided she would be sending her child to public school so she wouldn’t have to go through all that. When her son, Alexander, turned 4, she realized her mistake.

“I had always laughed at that cliché of parents in New York. But here I was just a public school mom and all these choices were in front of me,” she said. “It’s overwhelming.”

Faced with a staggering array of decisions and deadlines as her son prepared for his first day of kindergarten a year away, she did what a growing number of parents are doing each year: She turned to Robin Aronow.

Ms. Aronow is an elementary school admissions consultant who has created a niche by charging parents to help them apply for choice public schools. She is based on the Upper West Side, where public elementary school admissions are arguably the most competitive and complicated in the city. Autumn is Ms. Aronow’s peak season: Applications become available, and school tours and testing begin.

. . .

“I couldn’t have done this without her,” a mother of a 4-year-old, Brett Hill, who lives on the Upper West Side, said. “Friends call me crying, saying, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ They go to Robin’s seminar and they come back better and calmer.”

. . .

Ms. Aronow charges $50 a season to join the e-mail listserv, nearly $200 an hour for phone calls, or $2,000 for an annual all-inclusive package. She says she charges less than some of her competitors, who focus more on private schools. This year, she is also doing a pro-bono presentation at a nonprofit center for immigrants.

“Whatever it was, it was worth it,” Ms. Hill said of the costs of Ms. Aronow’s services. “It alleviated so much stress.”

See also: Manhattan Preschool Admissions More Competitive Than Harvard.

Not On My Formerly State-Owned Waterfront!*

The city announces a plan to build middle-income housing on the Long Island City-Hunters Point waterfront. Douchebaggery ensues.

*Hey moron, leaving aside for the moment that the whole idea behind a master plan is developing a mix of housing, did you actually think the state would turn over public land just so you could spend a million dollars on a condo?

Dumb & Dumber?

Who exactly rents something for $50,000 a month? Jim Carrey, that’s who:

Soon Jim Carrey will be hamming it up all over the Upper West Side. A source says he’s renting a four-bedroom, five-bath penthouse across from Lincoln Center. The actor, who’ll be paying $45,000 a month on a one-year lease, is due in town to shoot A Little Game Without Consequence, a remake of a French film that reunites him with his Mask co-star, Cameron Diaz. The apartment — which has a 2,000-square-foot living room, seven terraces, and views of the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge (eternal sunshine not guaranteed) — is listed for $11.8 million with Corcoran’s Carrie Chiang.

At 15 percent of a year’s rent — I gather brokers still get that kind of commission in Manhattan — that puts the fee at $81,000. Nice work if you can get it. (Then again, thank goodness Carrey didn’t star in What About Bob? . . . Carrie Chiang should at least buy Brian Carter a beer!)

And did anyone collect his last three pay stubs? Forty times $45,000 is $1.8 million a year, but I guess he’s good for it. Even without a guarantor.

Falling Apples And Trees: The Perverse Warping Of The Manhattan Child

Like the Manhattan Cat — having spent its entire life indoors — exists in a peculiar alternate universe, the Manhattan Child is raised under similarly perverse conditions:

Adults are not the only ones who engage in real estate envy and suffer from lust when they see a well-proportioned classic six or a penthouse with wraparound terraces and an elevator that opens directly into the apartment. Children, once assumed to be oblivious to the nuances of real estate, now know what is prized and what is not, and often feel free to comment on what they observe.

. . .

Julie Friedman, a senior associate broker at Bellmarc, described clients who are the parents of three private-school children. They occupy “the very inner circle of the social life on the Upper West Side and live in a beautiful prewar condo that’s probably worth about $3 million,” Ms. Friedman said. But the couple, professionals whose apartment lacks a separate dining room, stopped arranging play dates several years ago after holding a birthday party for one of their children in their apartment.

“The kids must have been 7,” Ms. Friedman said. “One of the children said, ‘Why are you eating in the living room?’ So from that day on, rather than put their children in a position where perhaps they were being judged, there were no play dates at their home. Now she is looking for a splendid apartment on Central Park West so that her children will be comfortable entertaining.”