Will COVID Decimate NYC Demographics?

 

Anecdotally, I’m watching an exodus from New York City among dozens of friends, and I can’t say I blame them. They’ve spent months trapped inside tiny apartments that they signed on the dotted line for in exchange for what’s outside their walls, not inside. You trade the space and comfort of the suburbs for the restaurants, theatre, nightlife of the city. Now, all that’s outside their windows are the screech of ambulance sirens and the inconvenience of grocery shopping with delivery windows that disappear faster than lightening.

Those watching real estate sites in the city are noticing the phenomenon too:

Everyone wants out.

What is this going to do to our society’s willingness to live cramped into sardine cans in urban areas, where the only mode of transportation is shared (on buses and subways)? The rest of the country is likely to go back to normal a lot faster than New York City, and we’re going to see the after-effects of this virus on the day-to-day way of life there for years to come. Will New Yorkers and other urban-dwellers permanently leave city life behind for the comfort of suburban life? In the short-term that is certain, but it’ll be interesting to watch if this exodus from urban life shifts American demographics and mindsets. One interesting indicator is what occupied my friends while they were locked down in their urban apartments: they baked sourdough bread with their “homegrown” yeast and tried to create little gardens on their windowsills.

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  1. Bill Gates Will Inject You Now Inactive
    Bill Gates Will Inject You Now
    @Pseudodionysius

    The rats and the roaches will suffer grievous withdrawal and mental illness from being abandoned by New Yorkers. They really are the silent victims in all this. And when they step down as Mayor and Governor, you will only have yourselves to blame!

    • #1
  2. Southern Pessimist Member
    Southern Pessimist
    @SouthernPessimist

    There is a German word that expresses my feelings about this and I bet you know what it is.

    • #2
  3. Bill Gates Will Inject You Now Inactive
    Bill Gates Will Inject You Now
    @Pseudodionysius

    Southern Pessimist (View Comment):

    There is a German word that expresses my feelings about this and I bet you know what it is.

    Epithet from the Anglo Saxon netherworld.

    • #3
  4. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Bethany Mandel: Everyone wants out.

    Bethany,

    What a surprise. Apparently, facts do matter. They dumped on DeSantis in Florida and they inflated Cuomo in New York. Whoops, Cuomo got a whole lot of elderly killed and locked everybody else down forever for nothing. DeSantis protected the elderly and then opened up the whole State.

    Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology? – Rich Lowry NR

    The Florida governor explains a COVID-19 strategy that has gotten bad press and favorable results.

    If you have been reporting the news and living off the fat of the land with that woke attitude then I have absolutely no sympathy for you. If your state was sucking money from the Federal government by the huge tax break that high tax states were getting and now they don’t, I have no sympathy for you. If your State now wants a bailout because it has pursued both fiscal and socially insane policies, I have no sympathy for you.

    It’s time for the woke to grow up and start living in the real world. They have a responsibility and it’s not too much to ask.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #4
  5. Retail Lawyer Member
    Retail Lawyer
    @RetailLawyer

    Yes, it will change the demographics, but I can only guess how much.  The people I know in San Francisco have all decamped to stay with relatives in the ‘burbs.  And San Francisco is a suburb compared with NYC.  Cuomo said on several occasions that conservatives are not welcome in his state.  If I was an illegal immigrant, I would be sanctuaried, but as a conservative US citizen, I am told by the governor I am not welcome in an American state!  

    So best of luck with that “European Virus”, Cuomo!  And the nitwits who voted for you, as well.  Hope you all enjoy your August.

    • #5
  6. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    New York’s history over the years has been to punish their Democratic leadership at times, but only when the Democrats also hold the higher offices, in Albany if it’s the mayor of NYC, and both the White House and Congress in Washington if it’s the mayor and the governor, because if they’ve turned things into a clusterfark then, there’s no Republican with any power at all to blame for the city/state problems (Giulani’s narrow win in 1993 over David Dinkins likely never happens if Bush 41 had beaten Clinton in ’92, because Dinkins would have run against the White House, and enough voters in NYC would have fallen for the spin that the six murders per day and the plunging quality of life in the city were all the fault of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). And the same was true for Mario Cuomo in ’94 — he probably gets a fourth term if Bush is president and the GOP had control of either house of Congress.

    Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio have pretty much put the city and its surrounding suburbs back to where it was circa 1992, though in a different way — the crime rate hasn’t hit Dinkins-Mario C era, but thanks to their inactions in February and March and their actions in April, the death toll’s higher thanks to the preventable COVID fatalities, and that’s now got people fleeing the city in numbers that even surpass the totals from 30 years ago. But unless Biden wins in November and the Democrats take over the Senate and hold the House, it’s hard to see NYC voters electing a Republican mayor in 2021 — at best you might see a repeat of the bankruptcy-era election in ’77, when voters elected Ed Koch as the most conservative Democrat in a mayoral field that included Bela Abzug. That stopped the bleeding for half a decade but didn’t fix the problem until Giuliani got elected in ’93. If Trump wins, NYC voters will probably elect the loudest anti-Trump candidate as mayor.

     

    • #6
  7. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Even Wall Street is decamping for Florida.  Will the last one out of NYC please turn out the lights?

    • #7
  8. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

     

    Now, all that’s outside their windows are the screech of ambulance sirens

    Now? Now? I house-sat – okay, tiny cramped human hidey-hole with a hotplate-sat on 23rd street for a week, and because it was an East-West street wider than two fargin’ lanes, it was sirens galore 24-7. But it was worth it, because, well, New York! Ta-Da! Sid Vicious died next door! So much history!

    I love New York, and like most people who  adore it for cultural, historical, architectural reasons, I  wouldn’t live there if you shoveled a million dollars in my bank account every year. Sure, it’s fun! the first time to see some peculiarly attired drug addict tottering on heels harangue a clerk at Duane Reade at 11 at night, because hey, what a city, am I right? But the daily reality of overpriced everything, incessant fargin’ car horns, the constant reminder that this city is really arranged now for the people who can swan into the Coach store and drop a few grand then whoosh up to a pied a terre on the 87th floor  – they’re welcome to it.

    I know, I know, the special places. That one bar. That one restaurant. The Met! Central Park! Believe me, I get it. I understand why someone might want to live in a closet with water pressure weaker than an old man’s urinary flow, because you can get Thai at 3 AM, and I don’t judge them. I do, however, suspect that a not-inconsiderable-number of them judged the rest of us for not adopting the NYC model as the ne plus ultra of human existence, and felt a sense of satisfaction that they were living some sort of authentic existence while the drones puttered about in their cul-de-sacs and worried about crab grass.

    So now you’re stuck in your flat? Well, why not use this time to write another piece about how the suburban backyard lawn is part of the heteronormative-industrial oppression complex? What’s that? You would like a backyard, but you think it’s imperative we decolonize the idea? Let me put this in terms you’ll understand: geddoudda heah

    New York used to be an expression of America at its most exuberant and excessive, the crazy apotheosis of the national spirit. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. But now it seems as if the things that permit one to make it there require confirmation of a set of ideas utterly inimical to the culture that constructed the place. Gorgeous bones; rotten marrow.

    So yes, people will leave, and they will be replaced by others, and New York will survive. It will not have the same place in the popular imagination, but to be honest, that ship sailed from a decommissioned dock a long time ago. The rest of the country is like Don Draper in that Mad-Men meme dealing with an nervy intern who criticizes him in an elevator.

    COVID aside . . . 

     

    • #8
  9. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Well.  I’m waiting for the first buyer to look.  I have a 3.5 acres home for sale in Pa. about 1.5 hrs from NYC.  Have to drive or ride mass transit to live this far away so movement will have to be everything and the idiots who run NYC better figure that one out.  In the mean time Pa. hasn’t figured out how to make themselves more attractive.  It’s taxes and schools I suppose. 

    • #9
  10. inkathoots Inactive
    inkathoots
    @KathleenPetersen

    I thought about recommending Arcosanti in Arizona as a high-density alternative to NYC. Sadly, it is closed now https://arcosanti.org/

    • #10
  11. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    I Walton (View Comment):

    Well. I’m waiting for the first buyer to look. I have a 3.5 acres home for sale in Pa. about 1.5 hrs from NYC. Have to drive or ride mass transit to live this far away so movement will have to be everything and the idiots who run NYC better figure that one out. In the mean time Pa. hasn’t figured out how to make themselves more attractive. It’s taxes and schools I suppose.

    Back during the Lindsay-Beame years of the late 1960s-early 70s, the progressives running NYC took the attitude that things were so supercalifragilisticexpealadocious in Fun City nobody who is really important or who runs a major corporation would ever want to leave … until they were fleeing in droves by the mid-70s, and the city during the early Koch years had to scramble and work with the state to stop the bleeding.

    That’s unlikely to happen at least until de Blasio’s out of office after 2021, and even then you still have the AOC mindset in the city which kept Amazon’s east coast HQ away and likely is thinking “Good riddance!” to any people or companies that leave New York now (because they somehow think government or non-profits will magically make up for the lost businesses and jobs, and they can fix the economy by barring landlords from charging rent, or some equally economically illiterate ideas).

    • #11
  12. John Stanley Coolidge
    John Stanley
    @JohnStanley

    For those New Yorkers looking to buy a vehicle for leaving the city, I would suggest the following:

    https://www.leer.com/truck-cap/100xq-sport

    you will need to add a truck, a suggestion is:

    https://www.waynefordcars.com/new/Ford/2020-Ford-F-150-for-sale-wayne-nj-dea359b80a0e0a170291550ce7a58f1d.htm?searchDepth=1:3

    Helpful hint:  make sure you get the towing package and blind spot monitoring.  The towing package allows you to add the following rental:

    https://www.uhaul.com/Trailers/6×12-Cargo-Trailer-Rental/RV/

     

    Remember:  it is a buyers market for cars and trucks.   

     

    • #12
  13. emg Member
    emg
    @emg

    The taxes are only going to get higher. The schools are going to continue to decline. The Democrats are corrupt hacks and have a stranglehold on the city and the state. If you take away all the conveniences and things that made the incredible price of living worth it, nobody is going to stay.

    • #13
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