- Heloise Villela
- From New York for BBC News Brazil
image source, Heloise Villela
Giovanna Almeida has traded her Brooklyn apartment for a house in New Jersey.
A house with a courtyard and space to set up an office was Giovanna Almeida’s dream before the world first heard of such a coronavirus.
Giovanna left Belo Horizonte, Brazil for New York, USA in 2015 and was living in Brooklyn when she had to self-isolate at home during the height of the pandemic.
When I still went to the office, I spent an hour commuting from home to work.
The ability to hold meetings and reports from home it completely changed the life of this Brazilianwho anticipated his plan to spend less and live with more space by at least two years.
Today she and her husband live in New Jersey, a state near New York, where their 11-month-old baby will soon be able to run free on the lawn behind their newly purchased house.
image source, Heloise Villela
Giovanna has an 11 month old son.
Giovana is a typical example of a trend that has turned New York into one of the states that has lost the most residents in the last two years.
Exodus from the pandemic
Manhattan Island is the county in the entire United States with the largest number of residents looking for homes and apartments in other cities or states: 200,000 total, as of March 2020.
Two other New York counties, Queens and Brooklyn, also saw many residents leave: 51,000 from Queens and another 88,000 from Brooklyn, where Giovanna lived.
image source, Getty Images
Image of an empty New York street during the 2020 pandemic.
Columbia University Business School Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh does real estate and finance research and he is worried about the future of the city in which he has chosen to live in 2003.
He likes New York, but believes authorities need to act urgently to prevent the city from falling into a vicious cycle of declining tax revenues, declining population, relocating businesses, and increasingly precarious services.
“That’s what happened in the ’70s,” he recalls.
Remote work resists
According to a survey by the Partnership for New York City organization, working remotely, at least for part of the week, came to stay.
As of October 2021, 54% of city employees were working from home. Only 8% commuted every day to work in offices and other facilities.
image source, Heloise Villela
The New York City Council wants to convert commercial premises into residences.
In April 2022, 28% of employees were working remotely, but the hybrid model has become popular and the number of those who worked from the office each day remained at just 8%.
In the latest survey, since last September, 16% continued to work from home all the time and only 9% went to work in person every day.
As a result, many offices are empty.
Now, at the end of the year, the City Council and the government of the state of New York have announced the end of the work of a commission that has spent six months studying precisely this problem: the corporate and resident evasion.
How to turn it?
Just take a walk along 57th street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, to understand what’s going on.
This area, which once had one of the most expensive commercial square footage in the city, now has several shuttered shops and completely empty office buildings with “for rent” signs.
One of the commission’s proposals is to convert these offices into residences. Professor Nieuwerburgh thinks the idea is good and cheap. Just change the zoning law.
“You can keep the shop on the first floor and convert the offices to the other floors, because it will generate demand for the trade,” he says.
That coming and going of people who end up stopping at the bar, sitting down to eat or deciding to buy something at the shop on their way home, ensures the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Better time management
Juarez Bochi has not yet left New York, but has seriously thought about moving with his wife to another city.
He was forced to work from home at the start of the pandemic and has never returned to the office. Indeed, if he can stay like this, he prefers it too.
image source, Heloise Villela
Juarez Bochi has made changes to be able to work from home and has no desire to go back to the office.
With the autonomy to manage his own time, he now jogs in the morning, but at 8 he’s already at work.
He rarely crosses the area he frequented, on the way to his old office. Today he is more in Brooklyn, where he lives.
call people back
Because so many people did the same, subway revenue plummeted. Also affected are shops, bars and restaurants.
But, according to Nieuwerburgh, New York’s future lies in going the other way: bringing back those who have gone and making sure the city’s population is diverse in terms of income and interests.
“No city can live on finance, technology and lawyers alone,” he says.
To be a vibrant city again, it will also be necessary to keep the artists, the hotel and restaurant employees, the people who work here in the entertainment industry.
“Before the pandemic, 60 million tourists visited New York every year,” recalls the professor, who warns him “without Broadway, without theaters and restaurants, they will not come”.
And municipal accounts also need help.
The professor explains that, starting in 2024, New York will have a deficit of 10,000 million dollars each year with a budget of 100 billion dollars. That is, 10% of the budget.
It’s such a big hole that the city will have to end up either raising revenue or cutting spending. In other words: more taxes and less servicesSt.
The risk is seeing New York repeat what it faced in the 1970s and what Detroit has yet to overcome.
That’s why Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh advises: vote for the city first change zoning and converting commercial buildings into residential buildings, rapid tax collection will rise again, ensuring the maintenance of transport, education and safety services.
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