“Why Therapists Should Talk Politics” is a NYT article by “a psychotherapist with a private practice in Manhattan”:
When people can’t live up to the increasingly taxing demands of the economy, they often blame themselves and then struggle to live with the guilt. … When an economic system or government is responsible for personal harm, those affected can feel profoundly helpless, and cover that helplessness with self-criticism. Today, if you can’t become what the market wants, it can feel as if you are flawed and have no recourse except to be depressed.
Too often, when the world is messed up for political reasons, therapists are silent. Instead, the therapist should acknowledge that fact, be supportive of the patient, and discuss the problem. It is inherently therapeutic to help a person understand the injustice of his predicament, reflect on the question of his own agency, and take whatever action he sees fit.
This page says that he charges $200 per session. Thus the victims of economic injustice that he deals with are living in Manhattan and have enough surplus cash to pay $200 for a 50-minute talk therapy session on a regular basis. I would have thought that these folks are the beneficiaries of economic injustice because the average American can neither afford to live in Manhattan nor see a $200/session therapist.
You are correct about the $200 rate, but it is not true that average Americans would find living in Manhattan unaffordable.
It is true that average Americans would find living in the parts of Manhattan where most of its white people live unaffordable.
Someone for whom it was thinkable to live in Chinatown or Harlem or Alphabet City wouldn’t speak so imprecisely. “Manhattan” is much bigger and more interesting than NYT subscribers are aware of.
I Just checked the map — the cheapest neighborhood in Manhattan is Washington Heights, though you might have a legit concern that it’s so far away from midtown which doesn’t apply to the other neighborhoods I mentioned. In all of them there are plenty of places you can rent for under $2k a month, sometimes much less. You might not like the cramped apartment or the crowded neighborhood but even under the current clueless Mayor crime has stayed pretty low, so “living in Manhattan” is definitely “affordable”.
Of course if you’ve got rent control it’s affordable in a lot more parts of Manhattan; you should post a sequel to your pieces on the economic benefits of having sex with high earners which focuses on housing rather than child support….
We’re all victims, its always someone elses fault and while we love our choices, we don’t really like the consequences. At times like this I think I’m talking to my 11 year old.
As far as whether Manhattan is affordable or not, we can’t really cherry pick highs and lows to get the answer we want. The average income in the US is around 40-45k after taxes and other non discretionary costs. The average rent in Manhattan is a little over $4k, which would entirely consume that income.
Its also unlikely that people living in the crime ridden, rat and roach infested, 8×10 $2k/mo apartments are seeking out $200 therapy sessions.
The fact remains that places like NYC and coastal California cities are way beyond the reach of anyone with an average income.
No, we CAN cherry pick, the whole point is that you only have to rent 1 apartment to live in and it can be below the average rent. You don’t have to put up with roaches and rats and “8×10” space restrictions either. In the four neighborhoods I mentioned, the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment ranges from $1750 to $2550 and there are plenty below the average, the PROOF is that there are hundreds of thousands of people living in Manhattan whose household income is no more than $40-$45k after taxes, or even less. (33.5% of Manhattan households have household income below $40k, according to official data.) They are very largely Chinese, Hispanic, and black, but they exist and are numerous and the places that they ACTUALLY LIVE IN are by definition NOT “way beyond their reach”. This data is easily discoverable.
And I already agreed with Philip about the $200 therapy sessions.
I am always a little surprised at everyone’s insistence in living in Manhattan or (now) Brooklyn Heights. I grew up in Forest Hills, a residential part of Queens, 8 miles from Manhattan. Central Park was a 7 minute walk to the subway, then a 25 minute Subway ride. You could spend a little more money and take the Long Island railroad to Penn Station in about half the time. I went into Manhattan all the time, starting at about age 12 for cultural events, bigger libraries, parties and dates. There are a lot of middle class neighborhoods (perhaps Forest Hills isn’t one of them anymore) where you are pretty close to Manhattan and rents are much lower.
Brian: This guy can provide “bridge and tunnel people” therapy in his Union Square office to those who are upset that they need to travel more than an hour round-trip to see their $200/session therapist.
Joe: Obviously there are a lot of people living in great Manhattan locations who yet have modest incomes. But this would seem to require a favorable dispensation from a housing minister and/or decades on a waiting list. Are you saying that the market rate for a nice Manhattan apartment is comparable to the $934/month median rent nationwide (see http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/ )? If so, that’s the same as two nights of midtown hotel. So I can become rich by renting hundreds of apartments in Manhattan and then AirBnB’ing them at a discount to hotel rates!
I wonder if ObamaCare picks up any of this.
Hey Joe, can you give me the addresses of 10 or so places I can rent today in Manhattan for $1750 or less. I need to move in next week, so no years long waits for rent control or anything like that. A real apartment that someone can actually get.
Right, you can’t do that because you cherry picked something relatively unattainable as your average housing figure while there are millions and millions of renters who make an average salary.
People who get cheap rent in Manhattan do it because they’re connected, they’ve lived there for a long time, they live in horrid conditions, or they live in a small space with lots of other people.
I never thought I’d ever have a discussion where the disputed topic was the low affordability of living in Manhattan.
If you changed “people” to “white people” you would be correct. I don’t have individual rental placements for you, but the cold hard statistics show that hundreds of thousands of Manhattanites pay less than $2k a month without rent control, in conditions that are only likely to be found “horrid” by people horrified at being the only white person in a concentration of Chinese, Hispanic, or black people. You might like to think of Harlem, Chinatown and Alphabet City as a wretched hives of scum and villainy, but they’re not.