Any Solution For Affordable Housing in Jewish Communities

Redefine Jewish community. You need enough Jews for a comfortable minyan, not a minyan on every block. My kids will probably end up out of town because housing expenses here are crazy.

Leave the New York Metropolitan Area.

In Baltimore, you can be find blocks with a half dozen frum shuls within walking distance and a block that is at least 25% frum – and a semi-detached house for $100K.

New York has a problem since it is government policy to have high housing costs. Few other cities have such dumbness.

As zahavasdad already said one option is upstate NY. I live in Woodridge NY year round and commute to NYC daily. I am home by 6:30PM. Yes I do get up pretty early (4:25am) in the morning to start my day. I telecommute on Friday’s and erev’s of Yom Tovim. Door to door from Woodridge to Port Authority is 1 hour and 55 minutes. What I wrote above has already been publicized over this past summer in papers like the Catskills Jewish Voice and the Hamodia.

Housing costs anywhere from low 100’s to upper 100’s. If you want a really nice house with a pool 200-250. You can find fix me uppers for below 100K.

Tuition is affordable to. My kids are in the torah umseroah affiliated day school. It will depend on circumstance.

With everything there is pros and cons. It’s not for everyone but certainly for some people this can work.

When I settle down, I’ll be looking at OOT communities within 3 hours driving distance of NYC. My rationale is that this would enable me to partake of the amenities without the high costs.

Scranton and Allentown are good examples of this. Both places are about 3 hours from NYC, yet I know people living in these communities who drive into the city for shopping and dining every week.

@flyer, your right.

as a Bmore resident, housing here is very tough if you want to be in the younger areas. (Ranchleigh,Pickwick,Beazer etc…)

Also houses sell within hours of listing, often never reaching the market. you really need to have a good realtor.

flyer: Stick to areas near Park Heights Avenue (local shuls include Glen Avenue (German), Agudah (Litvish), Sternhell’s and Taub’s (Hasidic), Goldberger (modern Hasidische) not to mention many others). Avoid anywhere in the county unless you want to pay for the privilege of sending your kids to good public schools. There are plenty of young families with little kids near the main shuls which are all near Park Heights Avenue and clearly within the city limits. While the city has a higher tax rate, it has lower assessments meaning the taxes are similar in city and county. A semi-detached will be around $100K (more if it is brand new) but most of the housing is mid-20th century, though there are still some brand new overpriced homes available. You are a short drive to both the Baltimore subway and light rail, and about 15 minutes from a MARC (which is the commuter train to Washington). Some people also commute to Wilmington. If you are more “modern” there are also many zionist shuls and one zionist school (Beth Tefilah) in the city. Remember that DC (Silver Springs) and Baltimore are in a relationship similar to Brooklyn and Manhattan – they are a single metropolitan area regardless of the political boundaries.

Section 8 raises the demand for housing. The more people who can afford to live in Brooklyn, the higher the cost is (laws of supply and demand). I think that if we get rid of Section 8, or better yet, limit it to areas of new growth opportunities, the price of housing in NYC would fall.