House prices have gone way up in the last few years—especially in some big cities like Toronto and New York.
That’s partly because the land that houses are built on has become much more expensive.
But what about the land people park their cars on? It turns out, parking spaces have become more expensive as well, especially in New York, where parking spaces are scarce.
The New York Times newspaper reported this week that one condo (a condo is like an apartment that you own rather than rent) is charging $1-million… for a parking spot.
That’s right, if you want to live in one of the 10 luxury condos on 42 Crosby Street in New York City, not only will you have to pay about $9-million for the condo, but you’ll have to pay $1-million to park your car.
The parking spots are about 200 square feet (about 18.6 square metres) in size, which works out to about $5,000 a square foot.
Not only that, but every month the condo owners have to pay more than $8,800 in taxes and other fees to take care of the building.
The Times reports that an average price for an apartment in downtown New York City (Manhattan) is $920,000. They said some very expensive apartments are selling for more than $90-million.
Source: www.nytimes.com.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Oscar Wilde, a famous writer and poet, once said, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” What does this quotation mean? How does it connect to the article?
Reading Prompt: Text Patterns
Often newspaper articles are written so the first sentence and the last sentence of the article connect. Read the article and explain how the first and last sentences connect. How does this help you as a reader?
Primary, Junior and Intermediate
Identify a variety of organizational patterns in a range of texts and explain how they help readers understand the texts (OME, Reading: 2.2).
Language Feature: Synonyms and Antonyms
Synonyms are words that sound different but have similar meanings. Antonyms are words that have opposite meanings.
Using the following words from the article – scarce, expensive, big, average, luxury – think of three synonyms and three antonyms to match each word. Record your ideas in the table below.
Word synonym antonym
scarce uncommon, limited, rare plentiful, sufficient, abundant
expensive
big
average
luxury
