'We've stopped dreaming': Meet the people abandoning Sydney - Polidicks

Priscilla Meyer and her young family are giving up on the Sydney dream. The 27-year-old has been living with her husband and toddler Charlie at her mother's house in Parklea for three years, trying to scrape together the money to buy their own place. But the Harbour City's high property prices and rising cost of living mean they're now looking to buy in Victoria, where they can get a house an hour's drive from Melbourne's CBD for under $500,000. "Sydney's just unaffordable for us," Ms Meyer said. "We can't even think about it anymore, we've stopped dreaming about it." Cost of living looms as a critical NSW election issue in a city which is widely accepted to be among the world's most expensive, particularly for housing. In focus groups conducted by the Coalition and Labor, cost of living is frequently cited as voters' number-one concern. Even after moving back in with her mother and stepfather, Ms Meyer said she had found saving money in Sydney impossible. "The price of everything keeps going up but wage growth stays the same, so it's just getting so expensive," she said. "We really have to pay attention to every little dollar we spend, finding the best phone deal, finding the best petrol price." Ms Meyer's mother Allison Williams thinks her daughter's generation is more financially stretched than she was as a young parent. "It's so much harder now — they both have to work full time and if they don't there's not enough money to try and save, plus childcare is so expensive, travel is so expensive," she said. Last year, property analyst CoreLogic's figures revealed the average price of a home in Sydney tumbled 9.7 per cent — the most of any capital city. However, it was still the most expensive place to buy in Australia, with the median price almost $800,000. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-17/nsw-election-cost-of-living-in-sydney-in-spotlight/10814616 Posted in Polidicks because there is an upcoming NSW state election, and the cost of living in Sydney will be one of the issues at the election. I don’t know how anyone can happily live in Sydney. Even forgetting the cost of living, the awful layout of the roads and gridlocked traffic is just a disaster. And while there are so many restaurants and cafés around, they are terribly inaccessible unless you park half a mile away or take public transport. I was working up in the Sydney branch of my firm last week, and despite signing off at 6PM and beginning to make my way back to Newcastle, I was still within the greater Sydney metropolitan area at 7PM.

I've got family in Sydney, and I really enjoyed my time down there when I went to visit them some years back. Beat the hell out of any UK city I've seen any day of the week, and I'd love to be able to move either there or Canada, but even nine years back when I went I remember them saying that it was hideously expensive living there and I just can't ever see myself earning enough to make the move feasible.

Are there any other big cities in australia that are interesting to live in, or is it like in all these eastern european countries where the capital city is pretty much like a different state from the rest of the country? (I know Sydney isn't a capital city of australia, this was just a comparison)

I mean, there's Melbourne but that's going through similar issues with costs of living. I believe the rent isn't as insane though.

Sydney is the most populars town in Australia, what is so uninteresting about Canberra, the capital? I need an explanation. I never saw anyone discusses canberra seriously.

Canberra is basically a ghost town. There's not much there except the parliament, the war museum and a few other touristy things. Essentially, when the country was founded we couldn't agree whether the capital should be Melbourne or Sydney so we build a new city that was roughly half way between the two. And that's where the politicians sit.

There's plenty to do in any Australian city over 1m people. So basically any state capital except Hobart.

Yeah there's normally tons of shit to do and see in major cities. Is juat that people love to moan about thier part of the country. A lot of people say Perth is boring but that's only because they can't be bothered finding interesting places to go. Sydney is a bit different though because the NSW government has gone out of thier way to kill the night life in the city to push people towards the casino.

Canberra isn't a ghost town dude, not by a long shot. There's three major universities in addition to a shitload of governmental departments. The population of Canberra is heavily skewed towards young people because of this. It's also really nice because unlike Sydney, it's really well designed. Getting around is easy and you're never more than a thirty minute drive or so until you're into a national park. There's also lots of excellent green spaces throughout the city. Sydney is a complete shithole and I honestly feel bad for anyone who goes there. I avoid Sydney as much as possible because i absolutely despise the place. Your public transport is a fucking joke, your entire nightlife has been dead for years (can't get into clubs after 1:30am, can't order drinks after 3am), Kingsford Smith is the worst airport in Australia (I can not describe how much i fucking hate this airport), and your tourist draw is a bridge that's been done better elsewhere and an opera house. It's also fucking expensive. Fuck Sydney.

I stand corrected.

I still find it fucking ridiculous how much power the state government has in Sydney. Like, the local City of Sydney government is effectively powerless and just has to watch them do all this dumb bullshit and it's fucking stupid.

Most councils are like that in NSW and throughout the rest of Australia. Eg I can’t recall the last time my local council flexed its muscles on anything. The American style, powerful local governments are pretty much exclusive to Queensland

I kind of like that model: a boring bureaucratic city. In the U.S. the capitol is made inaccessible to live in because of the immense cost of living. Rich lobbyists and politicians want fancy places to eat and live so if you ever go there to visit you are always staying an hour away at a cheaper hotel and eating food from a truck because the restaurants dont list prices on their menus.

The worst thing about Canberra is the cold; it gets down to -1 Celsius on some winter nights Thats just unbearable for an Australian

Coldest it got last year was -8C my dude.