I forgot to mention this when it came out June 8th. New York Times reporter Christine Haughney was kind enough to give me a mention.
Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses […]
In the boom years, Mr. Weinstein said, 40 percent of the mortgage applications he reviewed for buyers in Williamsburg included down-payment money, from $50,000 to $300,000, from parents. About 20 percent of the applications listed investments that gave the young buyers $3,000 to $10,000 of monthly income.
But in the past two months, Mr. Weinstein said, he has handled two to three deals a week in which the parents cut back their down-payment help […]
It can be hard to see the signs of financial troubles in Williamsburg because residents are so loath to show that they had money in the first place. Robert Lanham, author of “The Hipster Handbook,” said in an interview that many newer residents tried to blend in with the area’s gritty history and dressed “half the time like they’re homeless people.”
But parental help was obvious in the intersection of residents with low-paying jobs and $3,000-a-month apartments.
“You can put two and two together, that they have money coming in from somewhere else,” Mr. Lanham said.
Read it all here.
In other news, I hosted a party for the Northside Festival on June 12th. My amazing bloggers over at FREEwilliamsburg helped to make it an amazing night. Here’s what John Norris of MTV fame had to say about it:
No place I would rather be on Friday night of the Northside Fest than the venerable (Can we call it venerable yet? Why yes, I think we can) Death By Audio. Not because it was a chance to see bands that rarely play Brooklyn – as a matter of fact every few weeks it seems you can catch at least one of them around town. But because it was a showcase of some of the most exciting, modern left-field pop our fine locale has to offer… And people ask me ‘what’s so great about Brooklyn’? Um, this is.
