Giovanna left Belo Horizonte (Brazil) for New York (USA) in 2015 and was living in Brooklyn when she had to isolate herself at home during the height of the pandemic.
When I was still going to the office, I would spend an hour commuting from home to work.
The possibility of holding meetings and reports from home completely changed the life of this Brazilian, who brought her project of spending less and living with more space forward by at least two years.
Today, she and her husband live in New Jersey, a neighboring state to New York, where their 11-month-old baby will soon be able to run free on the lawn behind their recently purchased home.
Giovana is a typical example of a trend that has made New York one of the states that has lost the most residents in the last two years.
Exodus from the pandemic
The island of Manhattan is the county in the entire US with the largest number of residents looking for houses and apartments in other cities or states: 200,000 in 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.
Columbia University Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh researches real estate and finance and is concerned about the future of the city he chose to live in in 2003.
He likes New York, but believes that the authorities must take urgent measures to prevent the city from entering a vicious circle with less tax revenue, a shrinking population, companies that relocate and services that are increasingly precarious.
“That was what happened in the ’70s,” he recalls.
Remote work endures
According to a survey by the Partnership for New York City organization, remote work, at least for part of the week, is here to stay.
As of October 2021, 54% of city office workers were working from home. Only 8% commuted each day to work in offices and other facilities.
In April 2022, there were 28% of employees working remotely, but the hybrid model caught on and the number of those working from the office every day remained at just 8%.
In the last survey, from 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 announced the end of the work of a commission that spent six months studying precisely this problem: business and resident evasion.
How to turn it around?
It is enough to take a walk down 57th street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, to understand what is happening.
This area, which used to have one of the most expensive commercial square meters in the city, now has several closed 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 store on the first floor and convert the offices on the other floors, because it will generate demand for commerce,” he says.
This coming and going of people who end up stopping at the cafeteria, sitting down to eat or deciding to buy something in the store on the way home, ensures the survival of small and medium-sized businesses.
Better time management
Juarez Bochi has not left New York yet, but he has been seriously thinking about moving with his wife to another city.
He was forced to work from home at the start of the pandemic and never returned to the office. In fact, if he can stay that way, he even prefers it.
With autonomy to manage his own time, now he jogs in the morning and, however, at 8 am he is already working.
He rarely goes through the area he used to frequent, on the way to his old office. Today he is more in Brooklyn, where he lives.
Attract people back
Because so many people did the same, the subway’s revenue plummeted. Shops, bars and restaurants are also being affected.
But, in Nieuwerburgh’s view, New York’s future lies in going the other way: bring back those who left and make sure the city’s population is diverse in terms of income and interests.
“No city can live only on professionals in finance, technology and lawyers,” he says.
In order to become a vibrant city again, it will also be necessary to maintain the artists, 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 that “without Broadway, without theaters and restaurants, they will not come.”
And the council accounts also need help.
The professor explains that, starting in 2024, New York will run a deficit of $10 billion each year with a budget of $100 billion. That is, 10% of the budget.
It’s such a big hole that the city will have to end up raising revenue or cutting spending. In other words: more taxes and less services.
The risk is seeing New York repeat what it faced in the 1970s and what Detroit has yet to overcome.
For this reason, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh advises: the faster the city votes to change the zoning and convert commercial buildings to residential buildings, the faster the tax collection will grow again, guaranteeing the maintenance of transport, education and security services.
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