Again, we have been reporting about the enormous budget deficits that would continue to grow as politicians close down businesses and people flee big cities.
As reported by the New York Post last week, more than 295,000 New York City residents have moved out of town since February, according to data from the U.S. Postal Service.
The post office took in 295,103 requests for change of address outside of the City from 1 March through 31 October, with many of the requests coming from multi-person households.
The 244,895 requests filed from 1 March through 31 July were more than double the 101,342 such requests submitted during the same period a year earlier.
Besides moving to suburbs and ex-burbs, many households changing locales went to neighboring cities in New Jersey and Connecticut.
More than 13,000 residents asked that their mail be forwarded to Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties in Florida; more than 8,500 are now getting their mail in Los Angeles.
As we had forecast in March, the reasons for leaving include fear of the COVID virus in dense urban centers, the rise in shootings during the pandemic and shutdown, and draconian restrictions on movement imposed by the city and state.
Repeating what we had written, “I think people are afraid… of catching a deadly virus… afraid of crime and other quality of life concerns,” Michael Hendrix, Director of State and Local Policy at the Manhattan Institute, told the Post. “One thing we also hear is about trash and cleanliness of the city,” problems that are likely to worsen as NYC cuts workers to fit its shrinking budget.
Due partly to residents’ flight, the city and state have together lost more than $1.4 billion in tax revenue so far this year, according to a report earlier this month from the Real Estate Board of New York.
“Investment sales and residential sales year-to-date totaled $34.5 billion, a 50-percent decline compared to the same period in 2019, causing a 39-percent decline in tax revenue,” the report noted.
The financial loss is made worse by tourists’ absence.
“In the midst of the pandemic, we are beginning to realize that our 62 million [annual] tourists will no longer be [visiting us] in the short term,” Scott Stringer, New York City Comptroller, told Market Watch in July.
In 2019, tourists to the City generated $72 billion in economic activity, including $4.9 billion in tax revenue, and supported 403,000 jobs, according to NYC’s tourism office.
