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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

Young people, it should be expected, tend to be less sensitive to ultra-high rents

Is this really true? I was hyper-sensitive to rent just out of school. Every $100/month difference meant something I would have to write out of my life. Perhaps it's more true that very young people don't mind cramming 6 people in a house or apartment meant for 3.

This doesn't discount the conclusion, though of older people leaving cities like NY, but I think that's more about poor educational options for kids, rather than higher sensitivity to rent.

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I think it has more to do with the fact that if you're young, unmarried, with no dependents, you don't need much more than a studio or 1br apartment. You don't need to be zoned to decent schools or pay for private school and day care. You don't need a vehicle suitable for family trips (or, in some cases, you may not need a vehicle at all). Consequently, if you have a high-paying job, you have a lot more breathing room to pay more on rent.

Also important, when you are young and unencumbered, there's not much stopping you from moving every year. So what if rent is going to be a little high this year? Just move somewhere cheaper next year if it becomes a problem.

I suspect there are some confounding factors here. Most people I know would rather rent for $1000/month and have a good job in the city than rent for $300/month in a small town where nobody's hiring.

The article isn't contrasting living in the woods with living in the city. It's contrasting living in Orlando with living in Silicon Valley.

They're both cities and they're both hiring.

They're both hiring, but the... types of jobs they're hiring for vary widely.

There's maybe a half dozen places in the world I can do what I do. Orlando is not one of them.

Fair enough, but the article is about broader trends, not tradeoffs when choosing a particular specialty.

You left out the option where the person has a good job yet still lives in the small town.

I'm not sure why, but some companies are willing to waste a lot of their revenues fighting an increased cost of living in some places, just for the prestige of the address.

Apple has enough money in the bank to make their own Celebration, Florida, like Disney did. Why buy expensive space in someone else's crummy old city, when you can buy land cheaply, build your own town, and sell off the pieces at much higher prices?

We can't really measure how important something is in absolute terms, only the decisions people make. There's usually a trade-off between rent and the catch-all 'amenities', and most would agree that young people are much more sensitive to these amenities.

When you're young you need very little space. I lived on a couch in Manhattan for four months and am currently living in a bunk bed in SF.

Also, young people are much more open to not having cars.

When you realize that, in walking cities with "ultra-high" rents, you can subtract the cost of car+gas+insurance+parking (and just tack back on the cost of your MetroCard), it's a different way of thinking about it.

It is true for me. I got out of school (where I had to work my way through, no loans from the Gov due to my parent's income level) and I was finished scrimping and scraping. $55k a year back then was a dream and where I lived was the most important thing to me.

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