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The coronavirus pandemic’s stay-at-home orders have residents of dense urban areas like New York City pondering a permanent move to somewhere more spread-out for obvious reasons: more space, more land, lower prices.
Mulling the decision to leave New York has almost reached cliche status (there’s even a Leaving New York” essay genre, as the Times notes points out).As more New Yorkers leave, it invites near-constant speculation about a “mass exodus” out of cities. But are the folks skipping town getting outsized attention? Are there really that many people moving away—for good?
Some are leaving their cramped apartments behind for greener pastures
A not insignificant subset of New York’s population—estimated to be about 420,000 people, according to smartphone data acquired by the Times—left the city between March 1 and May 1. Wealthy urbanites fled to their second homes in the country, younger millennials decamped to their parents’ houses in the suburbs. And there are predictions that these people won’t be back.
Of course, privilege is one of the main drivers in the ability to leave. For many, it’s financially out of reach to just up and go. The Times’ findings show that the highest-earning (and whitest) neighborhoods in New York emptied out first. Large swaths of Queens and the Bronx do not reflect nearly as many moves. The Bronx is the borough hardest hit by the virus, aligning with data illustrating that Black, Latino, and low-income populations suffered higher death rates in the city.
For many families in Manhattan and Brooklyn who either lost their jobs or were able to work remotely, the pandemic gave them time to review their priorities in a living space.
“Some people, while being confined, have had a lot of time to think and reflect,” explains Su Jin Feuer, a psychotherapist with expertise in life transitions. “They’ve come to the decision that maybe they’re not satisfied in an area of their life.”
Whether prompted by a job loss that necessitates lower housing costs or simply wanting more space for their children, urbanites who needed an extra push to make changes in their lives got one.
“I am finding that people, now more than ever, are really examining their happiness, their life satisfaction, and what’s most meaningful to them—and are moving towards that in a much bolder way than before,” Feuer says.
Case in point? A 34-year-old Manhattan resident who preferred not to be named said that after almost a decade of living in the city, he’s never “had to take a second to pause and think about what the future means.” Now, after reevaluating what he and his wife want going forward, they’ve decided to move upstate. He adds that he used an Instagram poll to see how many of his friends were moving, too, and found that 85 percent of them planned to.
But deserters don’t represent the majority just yet
Apartment rental platform PropertyNest surveyed 1,001 people in May and found that 86.2 percent of them said coronavirus isn’t making them want to move away. The remaining 13.8 percent, however, said they planned to move either out of state, out of the city, out of their borough, or into a new home within the city. (New York City’s population is around 8.39 million people, according to a 2018 U.S. Census. If 13.8 percent of people were to move, it’d mean more than 1 million people would be waving goodbye.)
Another report from real estate giant Zillow notes suburban home listings are not garnering more pageviews on Zillow than last year, relative to urban or rural listings. “In both 2019 and 2020, suburban listings garnered the majority of page views from Zillow users, but there has been no suburban surge this year in the wake of the pandemic,” reads the report.
Both reports, however, contain data sets that are almost two months old. In a time when new information and guidelines are changing rapidly—and as the virus seems like it’s here to stay—it’s important to note that moving trends could change on a dime.
Findings from real estate analytics site UrbanDigs show that leasing activity in New York is far below seasonal levels, with a decrease of 62 percent of lease signings compared with late June in 2019. However, the second and third weeks of June 2020 are up 15 percent over the previous two weeks. This “hints that market activity, while still suppressed, is beginning to increase as the typically large number of summer leases roll over,” according to the report.
Further data from Zillow suggests that casual browsers are eyeing other metro areas, rather than suburban cities and towns. It also shows a 10 percent uptick in searches for home offices compared to last year. The site’s early research concludes buyers are “more concerned with a home’s features than where it’s located.”
Bonnie Chajet, who’s been a real estate broker with New York City-based Warburg Realty for more than 30 years, says she’s seeing buyers reassessing their needs in a home.
“They say, ‘Maybe we need another apartment with an extra room as an office. Maybe we want to move to an apartment with outdoor space like a balcony,’” she says. “There are people who are definitely New Yorkers who’ll want to stay here. But now they want to move to larger spaces that work for them.”
While working as a real estate broker after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Chajet says she saw some panicked residents flee the city.
“Did people talk about [moving] then? Yes—just like they may be talking about it now,” she says. “But I would say that there is not going to be a mass exodus.”
An estimated 4,500 residents left Lower Manhattan after 9/11, but that population “not only rebounded, but returned to considerable growth,” by 2005, according to a report from New York’s Department of City Planning. While coronavirus and 9/11 are entirely different tragedies, the knee-jerk reaction to leave during a crisis is the same. What remains to be seen is if the folks leaving New York now will come back after the virus’ high transmission rates subside.
Kristin Gorman, a 42-year-old living in Queens with her husband and children, was born and raised in Brooklyn, as were her parents. After getting married, she decided to move to Austin, Texas, with her husband. They worked to renovate a house there, but within six months, she knew she had to return home to New York.
Now, Gorman is watching other families decide to pack up for other states.
“There is not a New Yorker alive who hasn’t occasionally questioned why they bother to put up with small spaces, high prices, noise, and endless competition for resources, when there are so many less complicated places to live,” Gorman says. “For many, COVID-19 has brought those feelings to the forefront of our minds.”
Even without the pandemic, she reasons, New York can be a punitive place for a middle-class family to raise children. Gorman says she wants to stay simply because it is home—and nothing feels more comforting in times of crisis than home. But even her unending love for the city doesn’t mean she can’t see the appeal of leaving.
“My husband and I are tempted every day by the incredible quality and simplicity of suburban school systems,” she says. “I still think we may feel compelled to relocate as our oldest child inches closer to middle school, whether it is to a suburb or perhaps to another global city outside the U.S.”
Younger renters without children are also staying put. Jamie D., a 26-year-old living in Brooklyn, says she thinkspeople are overestimating how long they will change their behavior because of the pandemic.
“I’m staying because optimistically I feel like the city will recover before too long, and the things that drew me to the city have not changed. I still feel as though the city is generally a more exciting, vibrant, and interesting place to live than the suburbs for this portion of my life,” she says. “My life is still in the city. My friends are here, my job is here, the things I like to do are here. And as much as I would have loved some more outdoor space and generally more space during the crisis, I don’t think that is enough to make me not care about the things I cared about before.”
Gorman, like others who have stayed, believes the fundamental elements that make urban living attractive haven’t disappeared. Instead, she says, they’re paused.
“Try to fast forward one to two years in your mind, and imagine yourself and your family in your new city or town. Will you feel at home?” she says. “You are the only person who can answer that question.”
Madeline Bilis is a writer and editor with a soft spot for brutalist buildings. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, and other outlets. She has a degree in journalism from Emerson College and published her first book, 50 Hikes in Eastern Massachusetts, in August 2019.
I love going to the post office without one. They have people set up out front to trap unwitting visitors who want to mail a letter without one.
One day I say this old guy, looked about 80 or more, slowly walk from his car to the door -- a long walk for an old man with a cane. I knew what was getting ready to happen: and here he comes, making his way back to his car. I had an extra and jumped out and gave it to him, and told him I was sorry for these idiots up front, just before he made it to the curb. He turns around and heads back in holding it up to his face. Ridiculous.
Since then, every day I go the the PO, I walk toward the table out front where they assault the maskless, and right before I get to them, I take the sidewalk to the left and go to the side door. Just when they're ready to pounce, I can avoid them. I go in the side door, get my mail, then if I have a letter to mail, go back to the front door (inside), mail it, and walk past the women at the table out front.
One day I went in to get my mail and there is a guy in there wearing a mask, looking at his mail. He looks at me, maskless, and I thought I was going to catch hell. As I walk off, I notice he removes his mask. It was liberating for me, and I know it was for him, as well.
I just love it. Look forward to going to the PO every day.
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“There is not a New Yorker alive who hasn’t occasionally questioned why they bother to put up with small spaces, high prices, noise, and endless competition for resources, when there are so many less complicated places to live,” Gorman says. “For many, COVID-19 has brought those feelings to the forefront of our minds.”
After WWII there was a serge in population on the west coast, california etc. The coastal climate is delightful. About the mid 50s Californians started moving to N. Idaho. People with their cars just trash nice places. My idea of an enraged Rep. is that person who sees his area as being trashed by people from other parts who will bid up the price of land, pay higher taxes and generally price him out of where he has lived. Not hard to understand a bit of anger.
You can be assured that things will change, ready or not. I think it works like a man who tries to hold onto the woman he loves and becomes so possessive he drives her away. Like the song says, "We're all forgiven cause we're only liven to leave the way we came". Or, "we come into the world alone and leave alone".
So, I feel sorry for DT's kids and might as well take it one step further and have some sympathy for Donald. "Once he was a child, a beautiful child, a child of clay, shaped and molded into what he is today".
The earth is like a big ant farm with endless generations taking your place and in their turn passing it on to the next ... Don't die with hate in your heart, just in case there is a here after and you get roller skates for transportation.
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HOW THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PARTOOK IN VOTER FRAUD IN THE 2020 ELECTION.
Rudy Giuliani further exposes Voter Fraud in the 2020 USA Election, by Democrats, via a Canadian company, DOMINION, which uses software from a company, SMARTMATIC, a Vote Counting company owned by Venezuelans, who are close to Maduro and the late Hugo Chavez. The US 2020 election votes were actually counted in Barcelona, Spain, and then sent back to the USA !!! AND ..... via this software VOTES CAN BE CHANGED, FLIPPED OVER, etc, etc .. !!!!
A few more FACTS ....
1) In Antrim County, Michigan, many thousands of Votes, originally for Donald Trump, got flipped 2:1, via SMARTMATIC, for Biden !!! .... Democrats said it was an "accident(?)". In the 2016 Donald Trump got 64% of that county's vote !!!
2) SMARTMATIC was a company established via Hugo Chavez, primarily, to manipulate the votes cast in elections.
3) In an interview with Fox television, Giuliani denounced an alleged fraud in the counting of votes, assuring that the Dominion Voting System company could be "hackable". Giuliani also assured that "Dominion is a company owned by another company called Smartmatic, through an intermediary company called Indra. Smartmatic was founded in 2004. It was made up of three Venezuelans, who were very close to the dictator Hugo Chávez. It is created to fix elections. That is the company that owns Dominion. Although Dominion is Canadian, all its software is of Smartmatic. Dominion removed 2.7 million Trump votes nationally. Data analysis found that 221,000 Pennsylvania votes were traded from Trump to Biden. 941,000 were removed. States that used the Dominion voting system traded 435,000 Trump votes to Biden."
4) Until very recently, and just before he left, the CEO of SMARTMATIC was VERY CLOSE to one of the BIGGEST FINANCIAL DONORS of the Democratic Party, none other than "Socialist/Marxist Champion", GEORGE SOROS !!!
5) Democratic Party "Spokes-people" keep Screeching that there's "No Evidence Of Fraud claims" ...... BUT ..... The Trump Legal Team have submitted OVER 200 AFFIDAVITS OF FRAUD, and AFFIDAVITS ARE EVIDENCE for the dumb leftists who may read this !!!
6) In Pennsylvania and Michigan the Democrat Fraudsters UNDERESTIMATED THE VOTES THAT DONALD TRUMP would get in those two states, because they based their prediction on the number of votes he got in 2016. So when they got towards the end of the count, late at night on the 4th., they realized they had a BIG PROBLEM...... Donald Trump HAD FAR, FAR EXCEEDED THE NUMBER OF VOTES HE GOT IN 2016 !!! That's when vote counting was temporarily stopped so that tens of thousands of "doctored" Mail-in Votes could be trucked in. The problem with these Fraudulent Votes was that ONLY JOE BIDEN's NAME WAS MARKED ON THESE BALLOTS !!! NOT ONE OTHER INDIVIDUAL ON THE TOTAL LIST ON EACH BALLOT PAPER WAS MARKED !!! ..... A virtual STATISTICAL IMPOSSIBILITY !!!!!
But here's Rudy Giulaini providing all the detailed content of the above ---->
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