Economic refugees flee Sydney for NYC
Brigid Delaney
June 26, 2012
OPINION
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Manhattan 2012 ... a better deal than Sydney?
I finish my delicious, very large chicken and salad sandwich ($5), before taking the train ($2.25) home to my massive apartment ($400 a week), stopping off on the way at a bar to meet some friends for a cocktail ($8) where the waitress - seemingly unaware of the concept of standard measures - slugs a couple of extra shots in my drink.
No, it's not Sydney, circa 1992 - it's Manhattan, 2012.
You do not get much change from $10 for a sandwich in Sydney, a bus from the city to Bondi is $3.30, cocktails are as much as $20 and the city boasts some of the most unaffordable housing in the world.
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Sydney (11), Melbourne (15) and Perth (19) now rank among the world's most expensive cities, while London languishes in 25th spot and New York in 33rd, according to the Mercer Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2012 released this month.
My last flat in Sydney - sharing with one other - was a small box we leased for about $700 a week. But we had a glimpse of the sea through the bars on the windows.
Australians with low or average incomes have been forced for years to be creative: some stay in share houses well into their 30s; others move back with parents; one friend in the not-for-profit sector confessed recently he was staying with an incompatible but corporate girlfriend because he could not afford to rent by himself.
It's boom time in Australia and if you're in the fluoro-vest economy, you're so loaded you can commute to your second home in Bali. For the rest of the country, however, it's getting a tad difficult to just, you know, live.
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, says she can understand the cost of living pressures on families earning $150,000 a year, but what about those earning a fraction of that?
Perhaps they should do what I and thousands of others have done and move somewhere cheaper - such as New York.
NYC & Company, the city's tourism body, released data last month estimating that a staggering 1500 Australians are arriving in New York each day.
The spokesman Chris Heywood was overjoyed at the invasion: "There are people who come here for long stretches of time and visitor numbers have catapulted into mind-boggling territory - it's almost tripled from previous years."
But it's not just for holidays. New York is seeing a wave of Australian ''knowledge worker'' migrants, taking advantage of the E3 work visas introduced in 2005.
The New York Times reports the large number of Australians in the city "appears to be helped by an influx of young professionals seeking opportunities overseas".
Tony Waldron, 33, of Sydney, who is working in New York as a graphic designer on an E3 visa, says the typical Australian he meets here is "the second wave who maybe went and worked in London in their 20s and went back to Australia but weren't ready to settle down. New York is a logical place to go next."
What about the recession? "You can live cheaply in Brooklyn and freelance back to Australia if you want to earn a strong currency but not pay big rent," he says.
Brendan Moffitt, 35, of Sydney, has been living in New York for five years on an artist's visa and says while the cost of housing is comparable with Australia, "New York has cheaper public transport, groceries, phone plans, taxis, clothing and eating out."
Two weeks ago at the Australian consulate in New York, at a talk by the writer Anna Funder, the room was filled with Australian freelance journalists and writers, subletting flats through Craigslist and exchanging tips on good immigration lawyers and job prospects.
I met some who, unburdened by the huge student loans American graduates face, were taking up jobs in the (less than well paid) cultural or non-profit institutions and others who were taking advantage of lower than usual rents to linger and maybe knock out that play or book that they had been thinking about, but could not afford to do in Australia.
In 2002, Richard Florida wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, saying knowledge workers invigorated cities, made neighbourhoods more dynamic and stimulated innovation.
But in an economy driven by flouro-vests, with house prices to match their salaries, Australia's creative classes are being forced to get a bit creative about where they live.
Brigid Delaney is the author of This Restless Life.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/socie...ney-for-nyc-20120625-20yh2.html#ixzz1yr4JAsse
OK. Tokyo also.
