NIMBYism - How rich, liberal suburbs keep out the poor (@)

[msmerymac]

Subscription needed (I read the full article through my apple news subscription), but essentially the governor of NY proposed a housing increase of 3% per year for the communities in counties around the NYC metro area, including density around commuter rail stations, and it was 86ed by the Democrats in the legislature. A rep from Scarsdale, which is profiled here, said the "proposal would change the complexity of our county in a way that doesn't make sense." What about dense housing near transit doesn't make sense?! Is "complexity" a dog whistle for racial or economic diversity? 


Scarsdale is profiled because the median household income is $250k and it's 87% non-Hispanic white or Asian, whereas nearby Port Chester is 69% Black or Hispanic. But 75% of Scarsdale residents voted for Biden, so of course they see themselves as progressive and not racist or anything.  

@@@
An argument against allowing multi-family housing or smaller lots is that it would "overcrowd" schools, even though school enrollment in Scarsdale has been declining (as I think all school enrollment is, which makes me really interested to research these numbers elsewhere). Also, Scarsdale spends $5500 more per student and has a 55% differential in students performing at grade level in English vs. Port Chester - 32% to 87%. It's 35% to 90% in math. 0% of Scarsdale students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Research shows when low income students attend lower-poverty schools they can cut the achievement gap in math by half and in reading by 1/3rd over a 5-7 year period. 


www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/wealthy-liberal-suburbs-economic-segregation-scarsdale/674792/

This article is also based on this new book: bookshop.org/p/books/excluded-how-snob-zoning-nimbyism-and-class-bias-build-the-walls-we-don-t-see-richard-d-kahlenberg/19065084?ean=9781541701465

[plutosmoon]

@@@@

I just read this article and was going to post it. My brother lives in Scarsdale (I think his address is Scarsdale, but he actually lives in a different village) and I saw him in this article. He considers himself ultra liberal, but the thought of having lower income families in his neighborhood and schools is out of the question. They were aghast that I send my child to a title 1 school and SIL is super unpleasant because she doesn't consider me wealthy enough to associate with.

He was telling me he had to pack my nephew's lunch every day and as me his son's elementary school has no lunch program. I asked him what the kids on reduced and free lunch ate, he looked at me like I have 3 heads and told me there weren't any free lunch kids in Scarsdale, almost proud of it.

I really want to read the book, since I find the disconnect a bit baffling.

[Velar Fricative]

I have to post and run but this whole thing made me so furious when it happened. Long Island and Westchester residents get their reliable rail commutes and good schools and demand that they continue to have the ability to keep any undesirables out. I say that as someone who grew up in Westchester and now lives in the five boroughs, because nothing has changed since I grew up there in terms of attitudes towards poorer residents, which most certainly exist in the suburbs (actually, it has changed - no one I grew up with can afford to live in our town anymore unless they inherited a family home, and we were a solidly middle class town for a long time). Honestly, it's the reason I've really soured on the suburbs and refuse to leave the city limits.

[Jalapeñomel]

Tangentially @@@@

I can’t read the article, but I’m certain our principal will email it out to us.

So I teach in the neighboring district to Scarsdale, so I’m very familiar with this dynamic.

I can assure you that Scarsdale does everything it can to make sure that the “undeserving” people can’t live there (super high property tax, enormous houses, very expensive groceries and gas, etc). Yet they tout that they are welcoming of all people. They will push any child who has special needs into our district, paying for their busing and their schooling so they aren’t in Scarsdale schools.

I will try to post more after I tutor some kids in an exam they failed and will be retaking. And hopefully read the article)

[wawa]

Being involved in the land development process in a very blue place I can say with great certainty - everybody here's a progressive until we want to add apartments to their neighborhood and/or send lower income kids to their neighborhood school.

Not sure if this image will embed correctly, but very relevant....


eta: if you'd like one...

[msmerymac]

Around me, the euphemisms are parking and traffic. Even though in my borough, there are 60-70-year-old SFHs without garages or driveways. But no, we can't build a townhouse complex across the street from the train station (which means across the street from a 400-space parking lot) with first-floor retail to replace a tiny 1950s-era strip retail development because WhErE wIlL EvErYoNe PaRk?! Or they say the impervious nature of development is bad for the watershed, which it IS, but again, replacing another building and paved parking lot won't really impact it.

There's a lot of "I got mine (by moving to the suburbs 30-50 years ago) but now that more people want to move to this area, we need to stop them!"

[InBetweenDays]

Jul 25, 2023 9:46:45 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Or they say the impervious nature of development is bad for the watershed, which it IS, but again, replacing another building and paved parking lot won't really impact it.

It actually may be GOOD for the watershed. At least around here there is no requirement for a property to do retrofits to meet current stormwater regulations. But as soon as that site is redeveloped they have to do on-site infiltration and/or stormwater treatment.

[wawa]

Jul 25, 2023 10:20:12 GMT -5 InBetweenDays said:

Jul 25, 2023 9:46:45 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Or they say the impervious nature of development is bad for the watershed, which it IS, but again, replacing another building and paved parking lot won't really impact it.

It actually may be GOOD for the watershed. At least around here there is no requirement for a property to do retrofits to meet current stormwater regulations. But as soon as that site is redeveloped they have to do on-site infiltration and/or stormwater treatment.

YUP.

[simpsongal]

This is a raging debate in Arlington, Virginia. As of this spring, the new zoning allowing more multifamily units is moving forward.
wtop.com/arlington/2023/03/arlington-co-s-board-green-lights-plan-to-bring-more-townhomes-multifamily-homes-to-the-county/

[livinitup]

I grew up on Long Island and home owners are terrified of anything other than SFH even though it absolutely does not meet their family needs on both sides of the generation - children who grew up (like me) who needed small affordable apartments in their 20s & 30s, grandparents (like my grandma) who need smaller retirement places closer to adult children - now it’s my parents who want to stay on Long Island and there is no where to go. So, they stay in their house.

Housing absolutely does NOT meet their needs. They absolutely do NOT want to change anything. The cognitive dissonance is strong.

I’d venture to say that most home owners are “house poor” - all of their financial security is in their houses, so any dip (or perceived dip) results in a panic. On top of that, even more people have raided the equity on their homes, so it’s not even a nest egg anymore, they are just treading water.

And they are angry.

And pay high taxes. It’s not just the schools. My parent’s trash gets picked up from the side of their house 2x/week. They have weekly curbside rubbish pick-up (anything/everything for the dump). The parks & rec are lush and gorgeous.

It isn’t even just racism (it is racism), it’s just fear of anyone without this magical pot of money. And it’s perpetuates in the next generation !

It’s proximity to really wealthy neighborhoods and really, really run down neighborhoods. All you have to say is “Look what they did in Wyandanch, or Roosevelt” - not that anyone actually visits those neighborhoods, but the perception is overcrowding, terrible low income housing, failing schools, etc. “Letting” mixed use housing anywhere near their homes is seen as only a disaster and should be fought to the death. “Build it somewhere else.” And there is an abundance of proof, that is on full display, of really bad low income housing when it is built - when allowed. It’s a terrible cycle of distrust. “Senior housing” that gets proposed and passed with steep tax breaks/incentives, built (poorly) (without regard to what seniors actually need in a unit & community) and then the far-off corp owners over price the units, cry poverty, get waivers to rent to non-seniors, that gets approved, overcrowding happens, rinse, repeat.

If anyone has questions, you can ask me anything. This is already long enough.

[sent]

I'm on the NJ side and we do have a lot of apartments going up that brings a lot of "This is not the town I grew up in!" wailing with it. The spaces where the apartments went up look 1000% nicer than whatever junky dilapidated building was there before it. The town even built a giant parking garage so the parking complaints aren't as bad as before. But schools getting overcrowded is a problem. Our schools are getting more students per class in the younger grades, the numbers back it up. We just approved a huge referendum to fix the schools to accommodate more but there is literally nowhere to build a new one and the apartments keep going up.

[wawa]

The schools thing is hard - especially in places where the process to build a school is slow and cumbersome and cost bloated (so like...most places). You identify a need and maybe 5 years later you actually get a new school. Assuming they have the land...10 if they don't.

but that has to be based on real numbers not general fear mongering.

I know in a county here the planning department did an analysis of where their big school growth was coming from, and it wasn't new housing. it was turnover from empty nest boomers to millenial and genx parents in the established SFH neighborhoods. So like....yeah, build the apartments. Because you might as well address the housing issue since restricting new growth wasn't going to put a dent in the schools issue and you KNOW you have a raging housing cost equity issue. and then the other issue in a lot of places is that the school board is it's own elected entity, and the relationship to the rest of a given municipality (like the planning department makign housign decisions) isn't straightforward. Neither has a say over the other, and in theory they both answer to the mayor or exec or whoever, but....not always? And then sometimes they control their planning decisions, but they DONT' control their capital budget, so it's just...a very intensely political process in a way that goes beyond the usual county/city/town processes for things like roads or sewers or whatever.

I imagine that may be different in different places - there's a reason zonign is a local control issue, because it's hard to generalize to different geographies.
But zoning itself has just been weaponized SO MUCH that it's really hard to not want to just throw the whole thing out and start over.

[Deleted]

Jul 25, 2023 10:49:45 GMT -5 sent said:

I'm on the NJ side and we do have a lot of apartments going up that brings a lot of "This is not the town I grew up in!" wailing with it. The spaces where the apartments went up look 1000% nicer than whatever junky dilapidated building was there before it. The town even built a giant parking garage so the parking complaints aren't as bad as before. But schools getting overcrowded is a problem. Our schools are getting more students per class in the younger grades, the numbers back it up. We just approved a huge referendum to fix the schools to accommodate more but there is literally nowhere to build a new one and the apartments keep going up.

The irony is that class size is large in part because there aren’t enough teachers to hire. But teachers can’t afford to live in their own district because there’s no affordable housing.

[wawa]

Jul 25, 2023 9:46:45 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Around me, the euphemisms are parking and traffic. Even though in my borough, there are 60-70-year-old SFHs without garages or driveways. But no, we can't build a townhouse complex across the street from the train station (which means across the street from a 400-space parking lot) with first-floor retail to replace a tiny 1950s-era strip retail development because WhErE wIlL EvErYoNe PaRk?! Or they say the impervious nature of development is bad for the watershed, which it IS, but again, replacing another building and paved parking lot won't really impact it.

There's a lot of "I got mine (by moving to the suburbs 30-50 years ago) but now that more people want to move to this area, we need to stop them!"

your area (not your specific area, the entire metro) has such a weird relationship to parking.  it's SUCH a hangup.  

[sent]

Jul 25, 2023 12:33:01 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Jul 25, 2023 10:49:45 GMT -5 sent said:

I'm on the NJ side and we do have a lot of apartments going up that brings a lot of "This is not the town I grew up in!" wailing with it. The spaces where the apartments went up look 1000% nicer than whatever junky dilapidated building was there before it. The town even built a giant parking garage so the parking complaints aren't as bad as before. But schools getting overcrowded is a problem. Our schools are getting more students per class in the younger grades, the numbers back it up. We just approved a huge referendum to fix the schools to accommodate more but there is literally nowhere to build a new one and the apartments keep going up.

The irony is that class size is large in part because there aren’t enough teachers to hire. But teachers can’t afford to live in their own district because there’s no affordable housing.

So this issue hasn't quite hit us yet. They did hire more teachers so they have more sections of first and second grade etc. Many of our teachers do live in town (we bought our house from a woman who worked for the school district) but I'm sure affordability for the younger ones is going bananas when starter homes are selling for $600K. 

[Velar Fricative]

The thing with schools is that, like wawa said, it's so hard to predict what will happen. Birth rates have declined and are still declining, so overall there are fewer kids to educate but we have no idea where they will end up living, whether they'll attend public schools, etc.

But, one potential way around that is not having separate school districts in small suburban towns and sharing services. But lolololol good luck convincing Scahhhhhhhsdale to give up their independent district and merge with other nearby towns, or god forbid...with Yonkers. Also, as high as property taxes are in towns like Scarsdale that allow them to sustain their precious schools, that's a really effective way to keep the undesirables out. But then you're also keep your adult children out because they can't afford to live there on their own, soooooooo. As mentioned above by livinitup, Long Island is a classic case of that happening too. DH is from Long Island and none of his family live there anymore (all are elsewhere in NYC and other parts of the metro area), but even the adult kids of his cousins that are still on LI don't live there anymore because it's too expensive and the housing they want (apartments or townhomes) just doesn't exist nearby. And then who will buy these Boomers' houses?

[penguingrrl]

Jul 25, 2023 13:45:24 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

The thing with schools is that, like wawa said, it's so hard to predict what will happen. Birth rates have declined and are still declining, so overall there are fewer kids to educate but we have no idea where they will end up living, whether they'll attend public schools, etc.

But, one potential way around that is not having separate school districts in small suburban towns and sharing services. But lolololol good luck convincing Scahhhhhhhsdale to give up their independent district and merge with other nearby towns, or god forbid...with Yonkers. Also, as high as property taxes are in towns like Scarsdale that allow them to sustain their precious schools, that's a really effective way to keep the undesirables out. But then you're also keep your adult children out because they can't afford to live there on their own, soooooooo. As mentioned above by livinitup , Long Island is a classic case of that happening too. DH is from Long Island and none of his family live there anymore (all are elsewhere in NYC and other parts of the metro area), but even the adult kids of his cousins that are still on LI don't live there anymore because it's too expensive and the housing they want (apartments or townhomes) just doesn't exist nearby. And then who will buy these Boomers' houses?

When I ran for office back in 2017 I suggested that instead of having 3 separate K-8 school districts of roughly 1,000 kids each the regional high school district should be a K-12 district. It was touching the third rail and cost me my election. And it makes no sense to me that I’m paying for 2 superintendents and two staffs. And that there is no coordination from the HS district to the sending districts, so kids enter 9th grade having followed different curricula (this is especially noticeable in English, where they’ve read different literature).

But 1 of the 3 towns is historically poorer and has a lot of multi family and apartment housing and folks in the other two towns don’t want to mix with the folks from that town before HS. It’s bizarre.

[mrspez07]

When it comes to being a NIMBY, political affiliation means nothing.
All communities in the Denver metro are generally against increased density.
I live in a City that put a growth cap in place, with most of the people voting on it to keep out/limit large apartment complexes. A woman on Nextdoor complained a few years ago that the shadow from the new 3 story affordable housing project was creating an ice problem on the adjacent street and then doubled down when I mentioned trees and fences have similar impacts.
I work in development and we had neighbors (SFD and SFA) come out in droves against rezoning for an apartment project about 10-15 years ago, they didn’t want “those” people moving in and would prefer a pawn shop or convenience store (actually said that). They got a convenience store last I checked.

[sent]

Jul 25, 2023 14:05:25 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

Jul 25, 2023 13:45:24 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

The thing with schools is that, like wawa said, it's so hard to predict what will happen. Birth rates have declined and are still declining, so overall there are fewer kids to educate but we have no idea where they will end up living, whether they'll attend public schools, etc.

But, one potential way around that is not having separate school districts in small suburban towns and sharing services. But lolololol good luck convincing Scahhhhhhhsdale to give up their independent district and merge with other nearby towns, or god forbid...with Yonkers. Also, as high as property taxes are in towns like Scarsdale that allow them to sustain their precious schools, that's a really effective way to keep the undesirables out. But then you're also keep your adult children out because they can't afford to live there on their own, soooooooo. As mentioned above by livinitup , Long Island is a classic case of that happening too. DH is from Long Island and none of his family live there anymore (all are elsewhere in NYC and other parts of the metro area), but even the adult kids of his cousins that are still on LI don't live there anymore because it's too expensive and the housing they want (apartments or townhomes) just doesn't exist nearby. And then who will buy these Boomers' houses?

When I ran for office back in 2017 I suggested that instead of having 3 separate K-8 school districts of roughly 1,000 kids each the regional high school district should be a K-12 district. It was touching the third rail and cost me my election. And it makes no sense to me that I’m paying for 2 superintendents and two staffs. And that there is no coordination from the HS district to the sending districts, so kids enter 9th grade having followed different curricula (this is especially noticeable in English, where they’ve read different literature).

But 1 of the 3 towns is historically poorer and has a lot of multi family and apartment housing and folks in the other two towns don’t want to mix with the folks from that town before HS. It’s bizarre.

The regional HS is a thing up where I work too. My property taxes are ridiculous for the ugly old shack I just purchased, likely supporting the extra layer of admin. 

Gov. Christie had my town where I live on his list as one that should be absorbed into the district next to us. On a spreadsheet it makes total sense. But it didn't happen then and no way will it happen now. The demographics are all wacky - way too "diverse" on one side (educated immigrants with money), MAGA & the poors on the other side, and us in the middle with a mix of races but leaning Caucasian with money, for now. 

[penguingrrl]

Jul 25, 2023 14:44:32 GMT -5 sent said:

Jul 25, 2023 14:05:25 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

When I ran for office back in 2017 I suggested that instead of having 3 separate K-8 school districts of roughly 1,000 kids each the regional high school district should be a K-12 district. It was touching the third rail and cost me my election. And it makes no sense to me that I’m paying for 2 superintendents and two staffs. And that there is no coordination from the HS district to the sending districts, so kids enter 9th grade having followed different curricula (this is especially noticeable in English, where they’ve read different literature).

But 1 of the 3 towns is historically poorer and has a lot of multi family and apartment housing and folks in the other two towns don’t want to mix with the folks from that town before HS. It’s bizarre.

The regional HS is a thing up where I work too. My property taxes are ridiculous for the ugly old shack I just purchased, likely supporting the extra layer of admin. 

Gov. Christie had my town where I live on his list as one that should be absorbed into the district next to us. On a spreadsheet it makes total sense. But it didn't happen then and no way will it happen now. The demographics are all wacky - way too "diverse" on one side (educated immigrants with money), MAGA & the poors on the other side, and us in the middle with a mix of races but leaning Caucasian with money, for now. 

Ours is also on the list that should be absorbed. People scream about their taxes being “too high” but then reject any plan that lowers them if it would allow others to get ahead. It’s disgusting. 

Our K-8 district has a superintendent and 2 principals for 800ish students, which is absurd. I hate Christie with the fire of a thousand suns, but his proposal to regionalize these tiny districts is actually a much more sustainable idea.

[Jalapeñomel]

Jul 25, 2023 12:33:01 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Jul 25, 2023 10:49:45 GMT -5 sent said:

I'm on the NJ side and we do have a lot of apartments going up that brings a lot of "This is not the town I grew up in!" wailing with it. The spaces where the apartments went up look 1000% nicer than whatever junky dilapidated building was there before it. The town even built a giant parking garage so the parking complaints aren't as bad as before. But schools getting overcrowded is a problem. Our schools are getting more students per class in the younger grades, the numbers back it up. We just approved a huge referendum to fix the schools to accommodate more but there is literally nowhere to build a new one and the apartments keep going up.

The irony is that class size is large in part because there aren’t enough teachers to hire. .

I can assure you that Scarsdale does not have this problem.. they are the highest paid district in Westchester (possibly the country)—-teachers top out at like $157k, and many people want these positions (except parents are HORRID to deal with).

That said, even making $157k, you can’t live in Scarsdale because your annual $35k in property taxes will suck you dry.

[bronxgirl]

Jul 25, 2023 15:31:06 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Jul 25, 2023 12:33:01 GMT -5 @villainv said:

The irony is that class size is large in part because there aren’t enough teachers to hire. .

I can assure you that Scarsdale does not have this problem.. they are the highest paid district in Westchester (possibly the country)—-teachers top out at like $157k, and many people want these positions (except parents are HORRID to deal with).

That said, even making $157k, you can’t live in Scarsdale because your annual $35k in property taxes will suck you dry.

And you still need to come up with at least a million for a starter home.

[jordancatalano4ever]

Tangentially related I would love to have more options like this
www.zillow.com/homedetails/1800-Broadway-St-1-1304-San-Antonio-TX-78215/2061575041_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare in our city but the few areas that are developing this style of living are also pricing then at outrageously high prices. I don’t understand ( I mean aside from the obvious being corruption) why this isn’t more feasible throughout the country at reasonable price points. It seems unfair that you either have to be super wealthy to live in communities like this or you have to pay rent to someone who makes immense wealth off of your hard earned money. So for people who see single family housing as the only option this is probably one reason why.

[Jalapeñomel]

Jul 25, 2023 15:43:51 GMT -5 bronxgirl said:

Jul 25, 2023 15:31:06 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

I can assure you that Scarsdale does not have this problem.. they are the highest paid district in Westchester (possibly the country)—-teachers top out at like $157k, and many people want these positions (except parents are HORRID to deal with).

That said, even making $157k, you can’t live in Scarsdale because your annual $35k in property taxes will suck you dry.

And you still need to come up with at least a million for a starter home.

If you’re lucky…

[wawa]

Jul 25, 2023 15:51:28 GMT -5 jordancatalano4ever said:

Tangentially related I would love to have more options like this
www.zillow.com/homedetails/1800-Broadway-St-1-1304-San-Antonio-TX-78215/2061575041_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare in our city but the few areas that are developing this style of living are also pricing then at outrageously high prices. I don’t understand ( I mean aside from the obvious being corruption) why this isn’t more feasible throughout the country at reasonable price points. It seems unfair that you either have to be super wealthy to live in communities like this or you have to pay rent to someone who makes immense wealth off of your hard earned money. So for people who see single family housing as the only option this is probably one reason why.

corruption?  I mean...unless you're just calling business as usual zoning and land control and housing marketing "corruption" I think that's maybe missing the point?  nobody's being corrupt by blocking this sort of development - it's what zoning and the land development approval process has been set up to do.  Because it's a systemic issue.

land development is a business, and as long as supply is kept artificially low by restrictive zoning and an approval process dependent on neighborhood concurrence, they're happy to keep charging the resulting high prices and make bigger profits. 

[goldengirlz]

Jul 25, 2023 9:46:45 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

Around me, the euphemisms are parking and traffic. Even though in my borough, there are 60-70-year-old SFHs without garages or driveways. But no, we can't build a townhouse complex across the street from the train station (which means across the street from a 400-space parking lot) with first-floor retail to replace a tiny 1950s-era strip retail development because WhErE wIlL EvErYoNe PaRk?! Or they say the impervious nature of development is bad for the watershed, which it IS, but again, replacing another building and paved parking lot won't really impact it.

There's a lot of "I got mine (by moving to the suburbs 30-50 years ago) but now that more people want to move to this area, we need to stop them!"

This is the Bay Area. So much f-ing handwringing over parking.

Also, they’re getting quite creative here. The newest workaround is for towns to try to fulfill their housing obligation by adding housing for people with developmental disabilities because they’re perceived as quieter and less likely to cause trouble (and traffic!) than lower-income individuals — which here is anyone making less than $100k.

I posted a thread about it a while back:

pandce.proboards.com/thread/636687/white-woman-horrifically-offended

It’s worth a click just for the insane white fragility.

[Aloe Vera]

Jul 25, 2023 14:13:01 GMT -5 mrspez07 said:

When it comes to being a NIMBY, political affiliation means nothing.

I totally agree. Where I live, people don't want new developments to be built even though they just bought a house in a new development. The things you hear are insane. They think the mayor and his/her team are forcing people to sell their land to develop more houses to get more taxes.
And I remember when they proposed an affordable apartment complex, people were going insane. Just the word "affordable" meant crime and drugs for people. Except you have to make more than $50K/year to live there.

[kershnic]

Jul 25, 2023 15:31:06 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Jul 25, 2023 12:33:01 GMT -5 @villainv said:

The irony is that class size is large in part because there aren’t enough teachers to hire. .

I can assure you that Scarsdale does not have this problem.. they are the highest paid district in Westchester (possibly the country)—-teachers top out at like $157k, and many people want these positions (except parents are HORRID to deal with).

That said, even making $157k, you can’t live in Scarsdale because your annual $35k in property taxes will suck you dry.

My friend works as a teacher in Putnam County and has told me their teachers top out higher than that.  (She's working on her extra education to get up to it, because she had topped out on education in the city.)  

[Jalapeñomel]

Jul 27, 2023 11:41:22 GMT -5 kershnic said:

Jul 25, 2023 15:31:06 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

I can assure you that Scarsdale does not have this problem.. they are the highest paid district in Westchester (possibly the country)—-teachers top out at like $157k, and many people want these positions (except parents are HORRID to deal with).

That said, even making $157k, you can’t live in Scarsdale because your annual $35k in property taxes will suck you dry.

My friend works as a teacher in Putnam County and has told me their teachers top out higher than that.  (She's working on her extra education to get up to it, because she had topped out on education in the city.)  

I can’t imagine in Putnam they do (at least no one I know in Putnam makes this kind of money).

This is also just the base salary, so if the teacher does yearbook at Scarsdale, they have an additional $20k on top of the $157k (but this is for any extracurriculars—-sports are a huge money maker for teachers).

In case anyone wants to see the numbers:

www.topmastersineducation.com/school-districts-with-highest-average-teacher-salary/#:~:text=%231.,%2C%20Scarsdale%2C%20NY%20(%24107%2C100)&text=This%20small%20district%20recognizes%20the,any%20district%20in%20the%20country

(Although none of the other westchester or Long Island districts are in this data set, and most are higher than just the second ranked one).

Here’s another one: patch.com/new-york/scarsdale/average-salaries-best-new-york-school-districts