[Stuy Town photo courtesy of mauri212 on flickr]
Looking at the impending $4 billion-ish sale by Metropolitan Life of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, Gotham Gazette asks, "Is the era that is ending one in which middle class people can live in Manhattan?" That's a topic for endless discussion, but apparently, it still costs nearly the same to live in Stuy Town and Cooper Village, relatively speaking, as it did in 1950. Not to go too statistical on you, but to live there in 1950 a "median household" paid 15 percent of its income in rent. Today, they pay 18 percent. (35 percent is considered non-affordable, which many of you know.) Another factoid: When Stuy Town opened in 1947, it excluded non-whites. In 1950, only 114 of 30,000 residents were non-white. Interestingly, it's still largely white--only 18 percent of the residents are black, Latino or Asian.
· Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village: Then and Now [Gotham Gazette]
· Curbed Cheatsheet: Stuy Town/Cooper Village Sale [Curbed]