6 ms·

The Richest Neighborhoods Emptied Out Most as Coronavirus Hit New York City

47 points by johnny313 6y ago

flatiron 6y ago
“People who can afford and own second homes go to said second homes when pandemic hits” is a better title I think.
- jtxx 6y ago
  even better - "duh"
  - karatestomp 6y ago
    It's at the very beginning of A Journal of the Plague Year. I'm sure the same behavior among the same sort of people, for the same reasons, has happened approximately forever. It'd be news if it didn't.
- smcg 6y ago
  So maybe we shouldn't be giving these people tax incentives and pretending that they stimulate local business.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Isn't it better for everyone who has to stay if those who can leave do so? The higher the population density in a region the easier it is for a virus to spread.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    They are stimulating local businesses -- just not in NYC. And NYC is dependent on food/good/services outside of NYC, too, so it's not like this money is just vanishing to being transferred to China.
greatwhitenorth 6y ago
NYTimes will convulse if it can't pit poor vs rich in every single thing.
- danharaj 6y ago
  What exactly are you insinuating?
  - greatwhitenorth 6y ago
    Why does the title have to say "Richest"? Just list the boroughs or areas from which people fled. Most people fled from Manhattan, etc.. Not clickbaity, right?
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      Because they're asserting causality. The wealth of these people is what enables them to leave. That's the point of the article.
    - TomVDB 6y ago
      Why don’t you have a quick look at the map that they show, and observe that it’s not Manhattan VS Queens or Brooklyn. It’s some specific regions of Manhattan that are know to have some of the priciest residential real estate. The title is not clickbait: it’s a very concise representation of the truth. If they wrote “Manhattan”, that would imply places like Harlem as well, and you can clearly see that almost nobody above, say, 128th St left.
    - cribbles 6y ago
      The title is reflective of the article itself, which uses data to show that the wealth of an NYC neighborhood’s inhabitants is on average directly correlated with the extent to which those inhabitants left during the last few months. Alternatively the article could have “just” listed the boroughs as you suggest, but this would raise the question of why some boroughs emptied out and not others (also why there is visible clustering within those boroughs’ neighborhoods). This is the question the article tries to address.
curiousllama 6y ago
I know the point is to avoid getting COVID but... the hospitals in NYC, even in a crisis, are SO much better than they are out in the Hamptons (and other non-urban areas). It's night and day in terms of quality and resources. I purposefully stayed in [other big city] for this reason, rather than going home. Seems very short-sighted to leave if you're that concerned.
- dantheman 6y ago
  You can stay in your apartment and go outside and have a much much higher chance of getting the infection, or you can go to your second home where you have a lot of space and a yard. You can do outdoor activities and stay healthy with very very little chance of getting infected. Someone who lives in NYC.
  - dicknuckle 6y ago
    Cool, come down to the beaches along with everyone else from NJ and PA, bring us your worried, asymptomatic carriers. All the old people who live at the beach year round really appreciate it.
- cobbzilla 6y ago
  on the con side, NYC has been hit the worst and has the lowest % of available hospital beds. the ideal plan would be to leave NYC for [other big city with good hospitals & low infection rate].
- scott_s 6y ago
  I don't think that's the primary reason people leave. They leave because the entire point of paying a lot of money to live in a nice part of Manhattan is all of the fun stuff they can do in Manhattan. The amount of space that gets you in Manhattan is much less than most other places. They can't do that stuff anymore, and they're stuck in their own space. So they leave to a place where they can have more space.
olalonde 6y ago
This map looks suspiciously like a population density map.
- beckingz 6y ago
  One of the most common geographic data viz failures.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  Well here’s a real density map https://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/general-u-s/66962d1282079356-what-denses-neighborhood-your-city-nyc-blockgroup.jpg https://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/general-u-s/6696... Pay particular attention to Bronx and Harlem up in the north, Chinatown in the southeast.
OrangeMango 6y ago
Just in the first 3 paragraphs of the article: > ...An analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found. You need a smartphone and apps/settings that enable aggregation of location data. This is not something that is going to be evenly distributed throughout the city. Further, that is likely to be primarily advertising data, so quality is less than you would desire. How many people are going to be counted twice when you merge this data together? > Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. That's not a lot of people for NYC. > Some of these areas are typically home to lots of students, many of whom left as colleges and universities closed There are nearly 600,000 college students in NYC[1]. That's more than the number of people that left! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_York_City
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  A lot of those students are probably CUNY ones which don't live in dorms, and would have no place to "return" to.
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  From the same article: "In the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes." The point of the article is that the vast majority of people leaving were from area s of concentrated wealth. 40% is a large number of people leaving.
npongratz 6y ago
Seems to me as simple as this: the quantity and quality of options a person has is generally proportional to the liquid wealth they can access.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  In this case I'd say not needing to be in a particular place to keep up with one's responsibilities, plus having any kind of access to a second house—owning, access through a family trust, having the kinds of friends or family who own the kinds of homes at which long-term house guests are fairly normal and don't inconvenience anyone involved, that sort of thing—are more relevant than liquidity per se. Though cash would do just fine to buy or lease those things. My point just being the "liquid" part isn't necessary.
pradn 6y ago
Pointing out disparities between groups can help us decide how to address them. But I don't see how this article helps much in that sense; it's pretty obvious it would happen and there's no palpable remedy. It's one of the thousand ways it helps to have more material resources, a fact nearly all are already aware of.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  It’s important to have facts in a debate as opposed to leaning so hard on the quality of your instincts for money. “Well duh, isn’t that just what rich people do?” should only go so far in the age of data.
partisan 6y ago
Stream of consciousness, but as a New Yorker, here are my two cents: Anecdotally, one of the first things I noticed while driving through the Upper East Side about a month ago was the number of lights that were off around 8pm. It was a little disturbing to see, but people have their own prerogative and there is no way to tell someone that they should stay in the city to support the people who live here. Lately, I do still see people moving out. Typically one or two cars loading stuff. A lot of furniture on the sidewalks if you’re into that type of thing. I am keeping a pulse on things by watching rental prices on Craigslist. I enjoy seeing the sublet ads that ask for someone to take over a 3000/mo 1 bedroom apartment in Hells Kitchen. They’ll be back in September. Until then, pay their full rent to live in a neighborhood that was sketchy before, but barely habitable now. I don’t even feel safe driving through there after sundown. Which brings me to the point: I think the racial imbalance in terms of who gets sick is clearly driven by the ability to work from home, ability to actually socially distance, and the ability to just leave the city and go back home until things blow over. I’ve lived in a three generation apartment in the boroughs. If one person gets sick, they all do.

47 points by johnny313 6y ago

flatiron 6y ago

“People who can afford and own second homes go to said second homes when pandemic hits” is a better title I think.

jtxx 6y ago
even better - "duh"
- karatestomp 6y ago
  It's at the very beginning of A Journal of the Plague Year. I'm sure the same behavior among the same sort of people, for the same reasons, has happened approximately forever. It'd be news if it didn't.
smcg 6y ago
So maybe we shouldn't be giving these people tax incentives and pretending that they stimulate local business.
- tzs 6y ago
  Isn't it better for everyone who has to stay if those who can leave do so? The higher the population density in a region the easier it is for a virus to spread.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  They are stimulating local businesses -- just not in NYC. And NYC is dependent on food/good/services outside of NYC, too, so it's not like this money is just vanishing to being transferred to China.

greatwhitenorth 6y ago

NYTimes will convulse if it can't pit poor vs rich in every single thing.

danharaj 6y ago
What exactly are you insinuating?
- greatwhitenorth 6y ago
  Why does the title have to say "Richest"? Just list the boroughs or areas from which people fled. Most people fled from Manhattan, etc.. Not clickbaity, right?
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    Because they're asserting causality. The wealth of these people is what enables them to leave. That's the point of the article.
  - TomVDB 6y ago
    Why don’t you have a quick look at the map that they show, and observe that it’s not Manhattan VS Queens or Brooklyn. It’s some specific regions of Manhattan that are know to have some of the priciest residential real estate. The title is not clickbait: it’s a very concise representation of the truth. If they wrote “Manhattan”, that would imply places like Harlem as well, and you can clearly see that almost nobody above, say, 128th St left.
  - cribbles 6y ago
    The title is reflective of the article itself, which uses data to show that the wealth of an NYC neighborhood’s inhabitants is on average directly correlated with the extent to which those inhabitants left during the last few months. Alternatively the article could have “just” listed the boroughs as you suggest, but this would raise the question of why some boroughs emptied out and not others (also why there is visible clustering within those boroughs’ neighborhoods). This is the question the article tries to address.

curiousllama 6y ago

I know the point is to avoid getting COVID but... the hospitals in NYC, even in a crisis, are SO much better than they are out in the Hamptons (and other non-urban areas). It's night and day in terms of quality and resources. I purposefully stayed in [other big city] for this reason, rather than going home. Seems very short-sighted to leave if you're that concerned.

dantheman 6y ago
You can stay in your apartment and go outside and have a much much higher chance of getting the infection, or you can go to your second home where you have a lot of space and a yard. You can do outdoor activities and stay healthy with very very little chance of getting infected. Someone who lives in NYC.
- dicknuckle 6y ago
  Cool, come down to the beaches along with everyone else from NJ and PA, bring us your worried, asymptomatic carriers. All the old people who live at the beach year round really appreciate it.
cobbzilla 6y ago
on the con side, NYC has been hit the worst and has the lowest % of available hospital beds. the ideal plan would be to leave NYC for [other big city with good hospitals & low infection rate].
scott_s 6y ago
I don't think that's the primary reason people leave. They leave because the entire point of paying a lot of money to live in a nice part of Manhattan is all of the fun stuff they can do in Manhattan. The amount of space that gets you in Manhattan is much less than most other places. They can't do that stuff anymore, and they're stuck in their own space. So they leave to a place where they can have more space.

olalonde 6y ago

This map looks suspiciously like a population density map.

beckingz 6y ago
One of the most common geographic data viz failures.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
Well here’s a real density map https://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/general-u-s/66962d1282079356-what-denses-neighborhood-your-city-nyc-blockgroup.jpg https://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/general-u-s/6696... Pay particular attention to Bronx and Harlem up in the north, Chinatown in the southeast.

OrangeMango 6y ago

Just in the first 3 paragraphs of the article: > ...An analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found. You need a smartphone and apps/settings that enable aggregation of location data. This is not something that is going to be evenly distributed throughout the city. Further, that is likely to be primarily advertising data, so quality is less than you would desire. How many people are going to be counted twice when you merge this data together? > Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. That's not a lot of people for NYC. > Some of these areas are typically home to lots of students, many of whom left as colleges and universities closed There are nearly 600,000 college students in NYC[1]. That's more than the number of people that left! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_York_City

Ericson2314 6y ago
A lot of those students are probably CUNY ones which don't live in dorms, and would have no place to "return" to.
wonderwonder 6y ago
From the same article: "In the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes." The point of the article is that the vast majority of people leaving were from area s of concentrated wealth. 40% is a large number of people leaving.

npongratz 6y ago

Seems to me as simple as this: the quantity and quality of options a person has is generally proportional to the liquid wealth they can access.

karatestomp 6y ago
In this case I'd say not needing to be in a particular place to keep up with one's responsibilities, plus having any kind of access to a second house—owning, access through a family trust, having the kinds of friends or family who own the kinds of homes at which long-term house guests are fairly normal and don't inconvenience anyone involved, that sort of thing—are more relevant than liquidity per se. Though cash would do just fine to buy or lease those things. My point just being the "liquid" part isn't necessary.

pradn 6y ago

Pointing out disparities between groups can help us decide how to address them. But I don't see how this article helps much in that sense; it's pretty obvious it would happen and there's no palpable remedy. It's one of the thousand ways it helps to have more material resources, a fact nearly all are already aware of.

threatofrain 6y ago
It’s important to have facts in a debate as opposed to leaning so hard on the quality of your instincts for money. “Well duh, isn’t that just what rich people do?” should only go so far in the age of data.

partisan 6y ago

Stream of consciousness, but as a New Yorker, here are my two cents: Anecdotally, one of the first things I noticed while driving through the Upper East Side about a month ago was the number of lights that were off around 8pm. It was a little disturbing to see, but people have their own prerogative and there is no way to tell someone that they should stay in the city to support the people who live here. Lately, I do still see people moving out. Typically one or two cars loading stuff. A lot of furniture on the sidewalks if you’re into that type of thing. I am keeping a pulse on things by watching rental prices on Craigslist. I enjoy seeing the sublet ads that ask for someone to take over a 3000/mo 1 bedroom apartment in Hells Kitchen. They’ll be back in September. Until then, pay their full rent to live in a neighborhood that was sketchy before, but barely habitable now. I don’t even feel safe driving through there after sundown. Which brings me to the point: I think the racial imbalance in terms of who gets sick is clearly driven by the ability to work from home, ability to actually socially distance, and the ability to just leave the city and go back home until things blow over. I’ve lived in a three generation apartment in the boroughs. If one person gets sick, they all do.