From the Hudson Reporter:
With dozens of rental developments in Hudson County going up and many recently being completed, why does a current report say that county rents are still on the rise, and may actually hit a $3,000 average as early as next year?
Pure economics, says Mark Quartello of Palisadium Real Estate on Boulevard East in West New York.
Even though there is a lot of apartment rental stock available, many of those seeking a place to live are very specific in what their needs are, and have the income to support them.
“Historically in North Hudson, the towns of Weehawken, West New York, Union City, and North Bergen, have been more stable than other areas in terms of high rents,” Quartello said. “But nothing is like it is today.”
Rents for Hudson County towns have grown every year since 2009, and may top a $3,000 average as early as next year, said Reis Inc., a New York-based research firm, in a report in March.
That should not be a surprise, Quartello said, because Hudson and adjacent Bergen County offer great proximity to New York, multiple mass transit options, and relatively low rents compared to Manhattan.
But many of those working in New York City want luxury accommodations, and even though many of those projects are in the pipeline, there are not enough.
“Even with the additional development, you just can’t meet the demand,” Quartello said.
…
A large number of those renters are transplanted Manhattanites, coming to New Jersey for a bit more bang for their buck.“Consumers want to go to Manhattan without paying $5,000 a month for a studio,” Quartello said.
…
The luxury rental market in Bayonne is one of the fastest growing ones, because as in north Hudson, rents may be high, but they’re still not at New York levels.“Brooklyn is overpriced and their residents are being driven here,” Piechocki said. “They get so much more for their money here. Brooklyn and Jersey City are creating a new market in Bayonne.”
Good morning New Jersey
From the Jersey Journal:
Leader of anti-gentrification campaign in Jersey City denounces ‘Go home yuppie scum!’ graffiti
The woman who launched an anti-gentrification campaign in Jersey City earlier this week is denouncing the graffiti reading “Go home yuppie scum!” that was spray-painted on the side of a new residential building near City Hall.
“I think it’s disrespectul. That’s not the direction I wanted this to go in,” Devyn Manibo, 22, of First Street, told The Jersey Journal on the phone. “I never told anybody to tag buildings with spray paint.”
The graffiti was washed off the building, located at Grove and Montgomery streets, by noon. Dubbed Charles & Co., the seven-story, 99-unit building, courtesy of developers Paul and Eric Silverman, has not opened yet.
The anti-yuppie graffiti was painted on the Montgomery Street side of the building.
Earlier this week, Manibo launched an anti-gentrification campaign called JC Take It Back, a social-media crusade that includes slogans Manibo hopes supporters will post on Facebook and Instagram. One of them is “Go home, yuppie scum.”
By the way, having a latte at 9 Bar Cafe? That sure as hell sounds like a post-gentrification yuppie coffee joint. A place that prides itself on knowing the correct pressure and time to yield a perfect crema on your espresso? Gentrification for me, but not for you?
Makes sense.
What exactly is wrong with gentrification? Nice storefronts, new businesses, restaurants, new jobs, higher tax revenue to support the local services, new development, new investments? All so terrible.
Good breakdown and summary of the pension issue. Straight up robbery if you ask me.
“In 20 years, New Jersey has fallen to the second-lowest credit rating among all states and is facing a total fiscal collapse as pension funds become depleted beginning in six years. This turnabout has been predictable, but not remedied, since it began in 1994.
Clifford A. Goldman was state treasurer from 1976 to 1982.
HOW IS IT possible that New Jersey is headed for total fiscal collapse under a constitution that prevents one? The 1947 New Jersey Constitution protected the state’s fiscal integrity for almost 50 years. New Jersey held its AAA bond rating through tumultuous times of wars, assassinations, urban rebellions, drought, recessions, stagflation and other challenges.
During that time, the state made major advances in higher education, environmental protection, transportation, school finance, parks and open space preservation, water supply, health and human services and myriad other enhancements to the prosperity of the state.
But in 20 years, New Jersey has fallen to the second-lowest credit rating among all states and is facing a total fiscal collapse as pension funds become depleted beginning in six years. This turnabout has been predictable, but not remedied, since it began in 1994.
Law change spelled doom
The full answer requires the recitation of a complicated history, but the short answer is that the 1994 pension law changes doomed the state but went unchallenged, and, since 1997, the courts have ignored the constitution and enabled governors and legislatures to violate its basic protections.
The 1994 changes reduced the pension appropriation and kept it low for years. Then, the pension appropriations would spike upward to repay the reductions and the foregone investment earnings. Retiree health benefits had been funded like pensions, but they were switched to pay-as-you-go so the accumulated funds could be taken to balance the state budget.
In 1997, the Supreme Court allowed the state to violate the constitution by issuing pension bonds to balance the state budgets for five years with borrowed money instead of revenues. In 2004, it ruled that borrowing to balance the budget was unconstitutional, but allowed it one more time.
In 2003, the state budget could not afford to resume making pension appropriations from revenues. This led to a court challenge and a decade of deliberations on whether the state was required to appropriate the cost of deferred compensation it committed to pay. The lengthy deliberations allowed the state to skip most or all of those appropriations for 10 years while pension obligations kept accruing.
Then, the appellate court ruled that the state did not have to pay for the obligations it incurred each year. It cited the constitutional provision that one legislature cannot compel a future legislature to make an appropriation. The case did not reach the Supreme Court. The pension funds continued to be underfunded.
Deferred compensation
The reason for appropriating pension funds is to set aside money to pay for deferred compensation promised to, earned by and partially paid for by the workforce in each current year. So perhaps the baffling reference to a prior Legislature refers to the past Legislature that established the pension system itself, raising the question of whether pensions need ever be paid. But if employees have a right to their pensions, the state has an obligation under the balanced budget provision of the constitution to appropriate each year the amount needed to pay for them.
Overturned decision
Now the Supreme Court has overturned a recent Superior Court decision that the 2011 Legislature could compel the 2015 Legislature to make an appropriation even though the constitution and the Appellate Division say it could not. But more important, the Supreme Court abdicated its essential purpose of enforcing the constitution by handing the pension issue back to the two branches that have proved themselves incapable.
If retirees and workers are entitled to the retirement benefits they have earned, the courts have allowed the state to ignore the simple constitutional requirement to balance each year’s budget by appropriating funds to pay for all obligations incurred each year, including the cost of deferred compensation. That, on top of the unchallenged 1994 pension law, is how the state has been able unconstitutionally to amass more than $80 billion of pension debt on top of billions more of retiree health care debt, leading to fiscal havoc when pension funds are soon depleted. That is how the constitution and the future of New Jersey have been undermined. The Supreme Court has just added to the history of failure.”
http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-guest-writers/pension-obligations-a-history-of-failure-1.1355550
4- have to scratch your head on that one. Based on the constitution, impossible to go in debt. Somehow we are billions in debt. How? Easy, they just ignore the constitution since 1994.
Locals hate gentrification. It drives up rent. The Brooklyn natives are pissed because their entire part of the city has been flooded with hipsters.
The funniest gentrification skit was on SNL a few months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAsBta25OGQ
4 – Blah blah blah blah.
Lots of politicalese and legalese that describes an unqualified homeowner living above his means, borrowing to fund consumption. Sprinkle in plenty of Monday morning quarterback.
Cut services, cut payrolls, eliminate defined benefit pensions, cut healthcare, divest assets, consolidate, share services, reduce taxes.
6 – Pissed myself watching that
By the way, she’s wearing a hipster triangle shirt, and hipster glasses too. She has a hipster name (is that her real name?), and an “artist” to boot.
Clearly, she liked Jersey City before it was cool. Some kind of off the charts next level irony shit.
Something for Joyce, from a comment thread on CNN:
“come to Baltimore md,you don’t have to worry about the pd.”
(Proposed new tourism slogan)
I’ve only been to Bayonne once in my life. My cousin was getting married to a girl who was originally from Bayonne, so she wanted to marry in her family parish .
There was a gang funeral going on across the street at the time.
The juxtaposition of semi affluent white suburbanites across the street from gangbangers was quite striking. We all couldn’t wait to get into our cars and book it for Sterling and the reception.
Not only is she a hipster through and through but she’s enjoying coffee in a hipster cafe while complaining about the hipsters.
Look I completely understand the angst. It’s like when a band you really like starts getting popular and then they start playing it on the radio and it goes mainstream. Then all the posers start talking about it, and then you can’t listen to it anymore. I totally get it.
Grim says:
June 14, 2015 at 9:23 am
Look I completely understand the angst. It’s like when a band you really like starts getting popular and then they start playing it on the radio and it goes mainstream. Then all the posers start talking about it, and then you can’t listen to it anymore. I totally get it.
I never understood that phenom, what does someone’s elses opinion of music have to do with how you shape your own thoughts? The music didn’t change, the notes and lyrics are the same, yet the rise in popularity now deems the music less desirable?
People with such fickle opinions never really liked the music (or town, or insert your noun). They only enjoy the false sense of superiority that they associate with being different. My opinion is that people that have to be on the “cutting edge” are in love with being on the “cutting edge” because it feeds the ego.
Conformity through nonconformity is how I always saw it.
15 Grim – that sums it up nicely. Like finding the 4 Goth kids in a HS and showing them pictures of tens of thousands throughout the country wearing black-lipstick and brooding their lot in life. Not so unique anymore.
I am certain I watched a South Park episode that covered this, then again, I was watching South Park decades ago, way before they sold out with “Team America” and Book of Mormon, so I don’t expect you all to understand. :)
leftwing,
Your post on the last topic (#28) was right on the money! Exactly! How do you have a market if people can’t sell? Everything you said is truth. It’s a real f.ucking mess.
It’s the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave….Happy Flag Day!
Cook the oysters?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-beachgoers-warned-about-deadly-flesh-eating-bacteria/
re #2 – Look at meeeeeeee says the unemployed hipster.
I’m just really surprised someone that has surely faced discrimination at some point in her life discriminating against someone else for how they choose to live theirs..
Who am I kidding, no I’m not.
Joyce,
Just for you.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln–police-pot-shop-raid-edibles-20150612-story.html
And for everyone else,
Atlantic City? or pick another?
http://graphics.latimes.com/san-bernardino/
Re:# 21 – if you really believe that person is the leader of any “campaign”other than some “campaign” on social networking it might be time to stop drinking for a while.
Re: #16 – Just ask our resident financial planner, he still belts out Depeche Mode on his kareoke night, I feel sorry for his dog.
GTFOOH…..no dogs…..and I only do karaoke in Korean fried chicken places….yes it is an oxymoron……
Check out this article from USA TODAY:
Woman who pulled son, 6, into Walmart brawl charged
http://usat.ly/1JOhQyI
We all wanna live like NBA ballers in a town that features Mogadishu prices.
Me is Splat, mofo