City Living is Cheaper... Until School

[BVos]

An interesting article in the NY Times about whether it's cheaper to live in the city or the suburbs with kids. Now this is New York and the economy and economics of things are considerably different. But in a city like NYC I'm amazed that it's cheaper to live in the city than the burbs.

That is until you factor it private school. I'd say the same thing applies to Detroit. The costs of the outrageous insurance and having to drive quite a distance for retail are offset by low housing costs, walkability/bikability of some neighborhoods, access to low cost recreational activities that are significantly more expensive in the suburbs, etc. For many people Detroit can make a lot of financial sense or at least be worth a slight increase in cost. But I can't tell you the number of families that I've met who are middle and upper middle class who love Detroit and want to stay here, but when their kids get to school age, private school is the only realistic and/or stable option for their kids. Schooling can overwhelm a family's finances and pretty much force them to the burbs for good public schools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/03/yo...ref=realestate

[Det_ard]

Interesting article and topic. Some differences really stood out in the comparison.

Family of 4 in a 2bd/1ba apartment in Park Slope vs. 4bd/2.5ba house in NJ. Here you wouldn't have to settle for such a small city abode. I can't imagine raising a family of four in a small [[or even a large) 2bd/1ba apartment.

No cars in the city vs. two cars in the suburb. Big cost difference. Here you'd need at least one car, possibly two even if you lived in the city.

Property tax for the house in NJ is $16K a year!! No wonder NJ is in political revolt.

Commute from NJ is 30 minutes, could Park Slope be that much less?

Annual private school tuition is "often more than $25K a child"? Wow.

[DetroitDad]

Past discussion on this topic; http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...?t=1694&page=9

[mwilbert]

People generally don't agree with me about the Detroit public schools, but they should be disestablished. Ignoring their actual quality, which testing indicates is on average abysmal, the widespread perception that the schools are bad and unsafe makes living in the city very difficult for most families who have any concern about their children's education.

Even if we were able to bring the quality of the schools up to the average [[not-so-great) level of the schools in Metro Detroit, it would take a long time, and it would take much longer before people credited the schools with that improvement. It would be much quicker and more effective to use the school budget to subsidize kids attending other schools. Detroit would immediately become much more attractive to families with children.

I am well aware of the drawbacks of this approach. The arguments for public schools and against vouchers as generally proposed are pretty strong. However I believe those arguments are generally not valid in the case of Detroit, where the disadvantages would be fewer and the advantages greater than in the average system.

I am also aware there appears to be no likelihood of this happening, but hope springs eternal. In the meantime, the city should be working to make the city more attractive to singles, childless couples, empty nesters, and people needing assisted living, because those are the people it actually has a chance of attracting while the schools are as they are. That is still a pretty large market; most households don't have any minor children in them, that percentage has risen over time, and the percentage is likely to rise even more in the current economic climate.