Andrea Wilhelm left her apartment in New York City in August and is not sure if she will ever return. The 30-year-old software designer loved living in New York – going to Broadway shows, frequenting dog parks, and taking the casual walks of everyday life.
For almost 5 years, he voluntarily paid the city’s premium rents and taxes, even though he had to relocate to work in another state. But the pandemic exhausted it. “I thought ‘The city is going to come back. By July, everything will be fine.’ But it was still not good.”, said in dialogue with BBC.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving at all. It was a complete change.”
Increase in moving services
Since March, real estate and moving companies have seen a flood of applications from people leaving New York, many of them young families, as the pandemic drives demand for larger homes and more outdoor space, while facilitating relocation by expanding remote work.
So far, the increase showed no signs of slowing down, he said. Liz Nunan, president of the Houlihan Lawrence real estate firm, which handles home sales in suburban New York City, and reported her best year on record in 2020.
“One of the things I learned in 2020 is that I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m feeling pretty optimistic in 2021.”He stated, adding: “I think we will have a year almost as strong as 2020 turned out to be.”
In 2020, relocations from New York City led New York State to register the largest population decline in the entire U.S. and its first population decline since the 1970s. This exodus has generated 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 to recover.
Business closure and unemployment
Now what The US faces an economic crisis likely to last longer than the pandemic that precipitated it, such concerns are not unique to the largest city in the U.S. Urban centers smaller than New York, across the country, watched in despair as signs of a much sought-after renaissance (new restaurants, businesses in previously abandoned buildings) disappear almost overnight.
“This is a difficult time for everyone”, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real problem is: can these cities maintain their economic vitality?” In New York, the pandemic closed theaters, emptied offices, stopped tourism, and turned shopping and restaurants into hazards that you must take at your own risk, destroying industries that employed a fifth of the city’s workforce.
Up to a third of the city’s small businesses may not survive the pandemic, according to estimates from the local business group Partnership for New York City. Most businesses in the city center do not expect staff to return to the office in full. Some firms have already left.
The situation led the city’s unemployment rate over 12%, nearly double the national average, swelled the ranks of the homeless and drove out more than 300,000 people like Andrea, further straining public finances. In response, New York leaders raised the possibility of increase taxes and cut services such as transportation, garbage collection and park maintenance, as they appeal to Washington DC for emergency assistance to resolve financial problems, pleas that have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Michael Hendrix, director of state and local policy for the Manhattan Institute’s free-market think tank, fears that potential cuts will further accelerate the outflow, damaging the conveniences that make life in New York attractive and leaving a city more poor for those who stay.
“The pandemic is not so much the biggest challenge for New York City”, he stated. At the same time, he argued that “it is really the second-order consequences that were a blow to the recovery of the city and its citizens.”
For this reason he explained: “New York is not dead, but it is on life support. Whether its recovery is measured in months, years or decades, it is mainly determined by the degree 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, such concerns are uniquely American, reflecting security concerns and weak education systems that distinguish so many American cities from their counterparts in Europe and Canada, said Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto. He predicts that the abandonment of cities outside the US will be less dramatic and more temporary.
In the US, however, the urban resurgence of the early 2000s had shown signs of fading even before the pandemic, as immigration declined and relocation to the suburbs accelerated. In New York, the population has been declining since 2016.
The expansion of remote work caused by the pandemic means that the city now compete with even more places to host businesses and families– a trend that is unlikely to be completely reversed even after life returns to normal, Professor Florida said.
“Now talented people have options to choose from with remote work. Those choices will be made carefully.” He commented and continued: “The big winners are places with a lot of amenities, and the premium for amenities will increase. This means cities with beautiful coastlines or rural areas near mountains. Places like Miami Beach, Bozeman in Montana or Aspen in Colorado, or the Hudson Valley in New York. “
Andrea, who initially moved into her mother’s home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recalled that she did not completely rule out New York. But for now, he’s planning a road trip across the country, working remotely while exploring new cities he could potentially live in. “I’ll get in the car and drive around the country, and see if something feels right. If not, I’ll see where the world is in September. “
Kevin Pearsall and his wife left New York City in March to Atlanta, Georgia. After years of focusing on their careers in advertising, the 35-year-old says they wanted a hometown where they didn’t feel that housing and other costs of living were still over the top, even with their healthy six-figure salaries.
Both of them got jobs as remote workers for New York companies, another sign that convinced them that the city was no longer the only place where they could combine professional opportunity and social life. “All the good things about New York: speakeasies, beer gardens … that’s not as unique as it used to be”Pearsall said. “We were already underway, thinking of leaving,” he clarified. The pandemic “just sped up” the move.
“I know this city will recover”
New York leaders expressed confidence that the city will continue to be attractive, pointing out that the output of a few hundred thousand hardly makes a dent in a city of more than eight million.
“I’m not going to beg people to stay”said in 2020 Mayor Bill de Blasio. “I know this city will recover. I know. And I know other people will come. They have for generations. We cannot overstate this moment in history. It is a passing moment. There will be a vaccine. And then all the strengths of New York City will reassert themselves again“, argument.
The neighborhoods that emptied during lockdowns in 2020 were the wealthiest in the city, but a survey by the Manhattan Institute found that two out of five New Yorkers would leave the city if they could live anywhere they wanted, with greater dissatisfaction among those with lower incomes.
Hendrix stressed that it is tempting to hope that a more affordable city will emerge if the rich leave.But he is concerned that such an exodus will create even more challenges, given the city’s reliance on high-income residents for tax revenue. “It is not necessary for the majority to leave the city or for the majority to change their lifestyle to make a big difference,” he said.
Professor Florida believed that larger cities such as New York and San Francisco are likely to remain a draw for young people, who should benefit if rents continue to fall. But it warned that after previous crises such declines were short-lived. And in other parts of the United States, he expects city malls, including some of the burgeoning “Sunbelt,” southeast and southwest US, to face major challenges.
“The business districts, those places that stacked and stacked workers in vertical towers, are in a real reckoning,” he clarified.
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