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Andrea Wilhelm left her New York apartment in August and is unsure if she will ever return.
The 30-year-old software designer loved living in New York City – attending Broadway shows, frequenting dog parks, and taking the laid back walks of everyday life.
For almost 5 years, he voluntarily paid rent and taxes premium out of town, although he had to move to work in another state.
But the pandemic has worn her out.
“I thought” The city will come back. In July, everything will be fine. “But it still wasn’t good,” he said.
“I had no plans to leave at all,” he adds. “It was a complete change.”
Increase in moving services
Since March, real estate and moving companies have seen a flood of requests from people leaving New York, including many young families, as the pandemic fuels demand for larger homes and more outdoor space, at the same time. . which facilitates relocation when expanding remote work.
So far, the increase has shown no signs of slowing down, said Liz Nunan, president of real estate firm Houlihan Lawrence, which manages home sales in suburban New York City, and reported her best year ever. registered in 2020.
“One of the things I learned in 2020 is that I have no idea what the future holds, but I feel pretty optimistic in 2021,” he says. “I think we’ll have a year that is almost as strong as 2020.”
In 2020, New York relocations led to New York State having the largest population decline in the whole of the United States. and its first demographic decline since the 1970s.
This exodus has spawned a small universe of articles debating whether New York City is dead or dying, and what should be done – if anything can be done – to help it recover.
Business closure and unemployment
Now that the United States faces an economic crisis that is likely to last longer than the pandemic that precipitated it, these concerns are not unique to America’s largest city.
Urban centers smaller than New York City, across the country, have seen desperate signs of a much sought-after renaissance – new restaurants, businesses in previously abandoned buildings – disappear almost overnight.
“It’s a tough time for everyone,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real problem is: can these cities maintain their economic vitality?”
In New York City, the pandemic has closed theaters, emptied offices, halted tourism, and turned shops and restaurants into dangers you must take at your own risk, destroying industries that employed a fifth of the nation’s workforce. city.
Up to a third of the city’s small businesses may not survive the pandemic, according to estimates by the local Partnership for New York City group of companies. Most downtown businesses don’t expect staff to come back to the entire office. Some companies have already left.
The situation has pushed the city’s unemployment rate to over 12%, almost double the national average, swelled the ranks of the homeless and chased out over 300,000 people like Andrea, which has further roughened it up. Public finance test.
In response, New York officials raised the possibility of raising taxes and cutting services such as transportation, garbage collection and park maintenance, while calling on Washington DC for help from urgency to solve financial problems, argues that even now they have fallen on deaf ears.
Michael Hendrix, director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute’s Free Market Think Tank, fears the potential cuts will further speed up exits, damaging the amenities that make life in New York City appealing and leave a poorer city for those who stay.
“The pandemic isn’t really the biggest challenge for New York City,” he says. “It was really the second-order consequences that dealt a heavy blow to the recovery of the city and its citizens.”
“New York is not dead, but he’s on life support,” he says. “Whether your recovery is measured in months, years or decades, it depends primarily on the level of leadership that we see in the city. And I think that’s why we should be so concerned.
Competition from other cities
In some ways, these concerns are uniquely American, reflecting the security concerns and weak educational systems that distinguish so many American cities from their counterparts in Europe and Canada, says Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto. . He predicts that the abandonment of cities outside of the United States will be less dramatic and more temporary.
In the United States, however, the urban resurgence of the early 2000s showed signs of fading even before the pandemic, as immigration declined and trips to the suburbs accelerated.
In New York, the population has been declining since 2016.
The expansion of remote working caused by the pandemic means the city is now competing with even more places to host businesses and families, a trend that is unlikely to be completely reversed even after normalcy returns. explains the professor. Florida.
“Now talented people have a variety of options to choose from through remote work. These choices will be made with care, ”he said. “The big winners are places with a lot of amenities, and the premium for amenities goes up. That means cities with beautiful coastlines or rural areas close to the mountains. Places like Miami Beach, Bozeman in MT or Aspen in the United States. Colorado, or the Hudson Valley in New York “.
Andrea, who first moved into her mother’s house in Pittsburgh, Pa., Says she hasn’t completely excluded New York City. But for now, he’s planning a road trip across the country, working remotely while exploring new cities he could potentially live in.
“I would get in the car and drive across the country, and see if something feels right,” he says. “Otherwise, see where the world is in September.”
Kevin Pearsall and his wife left New York in March for Atlanta, Georgia. After years of focusing on his advertising career, the 35-year-old said he wanted a hometown where he didn’t think housing and other living costs were always excessive, even with their salaries at six. figures.
Both landed remote worker jobs for New York City companies, another sign that convinced them the city was no longer the only place they could combine career opportunity and social life.
“All the good things about New York: speakeasies, beer gardens… it’s not as unique as it used to be,” Pearsall says.
“We were already on the move, thinking of leaving,” he said. The pandemic “has only accelerated” the movement.
“I know this town will recover”
Leaders in New York have expressed confidence that the city will remain attractive, noting that the exodus of a few hundred thousand people is barely making a dent in a city of more than eight million people.
“I’m not going to beg people to stay,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in 2020. “I know this town is going to recover. I know. And I know other people will come. They did. for generations. ”
“We cannot overestimate this moment in history,” he added. “It’s a passing moment. There will be a vaccine. And then all the forces in New York will reassert themselves.”
The neighborhoods that emptied during lockdowns in 2020 were the city’s richest, but a Manhattan Institute survey found two in five New Yorkers would leave the city if they could live where they wanted, with the most great dissatisfaction among those with income. inferior.
Hendrix says it’s tempting to expect a more affordable city to emerge if the rich leave, but fears such an exodus could create even more challenges, given the city’s reliance on high-income residents for its tax revenues.
“Most of them don’t have to leave town or change their lifestyle to make a big difference,” he says.
Large cities, such as New York and San Francisco, are likely to remain an attraction for young people, who should benefit if rents continue to fall, Professor Florida says.
But he warns that after previous crises, such declines have been short-lived. And in other parts of the United States, he expects malls, including some of the “Sunbelt” (“Belt of the Sun”, Southeast and Southwestern United States) in growth, face major challenges.
“Business districts, those places that stacked and piled workers on vertical towers, are really taken into account,” he says.
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