How many do you need exactly? Without the price filter, there are 3,406 listings. 130 out of 3,406 is not huge, but if you're making 20% less than the amount of money you supposedly need in order to live, that seems alright. The point is not that it's a wonderful easy comfortable life, the point is that saying you need $125k "to live" doesn't fit the facts.

Note that I was being generous in filtering by 3 bedrooms. The study allows for two children to share a room, and looks at a family of four, so a two bedroom apartment would suffice. Zillow has over a thousand listings under $2,800/month with two bedrooms. Many of those would be within an hour train ride of Meta HQ or whatever fancy destination we're looking at. I'll also note that we've excluded everything outside NYC proper even though there are places in NJ and non-City NY that are within that range as well.

I don't see anything in the above links about rent control or stabilization. I'm sure that affects things significantly, but it's irrelevant to my point if the number that I'm casting doubt upon isn't intended to reflect some sort of ideal free rental market.

Let me be clear about what that point is: I don't think that NYC families actually need over $125k in income "to live." I think the criteria on which that is determined is way too pessimistic, in particular assuming that all families need $30,000+/year in child care, and that all families will pay at least 40th percentile rent. More broadly, given that a great majority of the city's households make less than the figure given, it just can't be correct.

I don't know what you think is off base about my perception of those things. You seem to think that my perception about other things is off base. Which it may well be. But that doesn't affect my point.

We seem to just be talking past each other. You're arguing some broader thing about struggling families in NYC. I'm arguing about one specific number and how it's described. If you want to argue that it's not possible for a family to survive without assistance on a single custodian job at Meta HQ, or that rent control distorts the market, I already believe it. But if you want to argue that the $125k figure is correct because $21/hour is not enough and rent control exists, that's just a non sequitur.