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New York City adds 629,000 people, defying predictions of its decline
- weimerica 5y agoThe Census was conducted for 2020 - how many have fled in light of the egregious lockdowns?
- he_is_legend 5y agoProbably just a handful of internet cranks. How many would you estimate?
- weimerica 5y agoBased on the influx of license plates in my once idyllic community, far too many.
- throwaway9980 5y agoI've noticed a lot of NY plates where I live too. Since most people who live in NYC don't own cars, it seems like these must be people who are being displaced. I know quite a few New Yorkers who have moved upstate or out to Long Island semi-permanently.
- ghaff 5y agoIf you look at NYC as a whole (i.e. all 5 boroughs), 45% own cars, so a minority but still a lot of cars. ADDED: Manhattan is about half that percentage but, again, still a lot of cars and people.
- ahoy 5y agoSpecifically that's 45% of all households, not 45% of residents. Those rates are super low the closer you are to manhattan, and much higher as you reach the outer parts of the outer boroughs [https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars] And for context, the average US household owns about 1.9 cars. Not an apples-to-apples comparison, but its easy to see that NYC car ownership is MUCH lower than the nation on average. [https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/highlights_of_the_2001_national_household_travel_survey/section_01 https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/highlights_of_the_2...]
- ghaff 5y agoYou're right. I misread the data.
- eugenekolo 5y agoAnecdotally, many NYCers own cars as family units, especially common in the non-Manhattan suburbs. It's just not typically a 1:1 adult/car pairing like the suburbs are.
- eugenekolo 5y agoTypo'd "non-Manhattan suburbs" -> "boroughs"
- mattzito 5y agoAccording to postal service data, it was an extra 1.7% compared to 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/19/upshot/how-the-pandemic-did-and-didnt-change-moves.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/19/upshot/how-th... Which is not small, but it bears out my anecdotal impression as an NYC resident- most of the people leaving are people who would have left in the next few years anyway, the pandemic just moved up their timeframe. And no one moved to avoid the “egregious lockdowns”, it’s just that working from home is a lot harder in an NYC apartment compared to a house.
- ghaff 5y agoWhile I'm aware of specific exceptions, I expect that's the norm. People who had moving out of the city on their radar screens deciding that the past year was as good a time as any to accelerate the process. The question will be whether the usual cycle (of about the past 20 years) of an equal or larger cohort of young people move in to replace them.
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoAs if people didn't lose their jobs during the pandemic, unemployment didn't skyrocket, and people didn't have to pick up new remote jobs which pay less and force you to live outside NYC... Get in reality
- nemo44x 5y agoThe vacancy rate in Manhattan is around 11% today compared to the more typical 1.5%-2%. Im sure it will come back over time.
- iso1210 5y ago9-10% of the 8.8 million would be 800-900k, taking population back to about 2010 levels.
- nemo44x 5y agoNot sure if it’s that many but who knows. Below 34th St is around 17%. Rents are about 20% cheaper than before the pandemic. Here’s an article detailing this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/manhattans-apartment-vacancy-rate-is-stubbornly-high-11621519206 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/manhat...
- mattzito 5y agoThat’s from back in May - things have changed quite a bit since then: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/realestate/new-york-rents.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/real... In June they were already back to only 11% down, and it’s been accelerating since then. I doubt it’ll stabilize at pre-pandemic levels for a while, but it’s nowhere near where it was even 6 months ago
- supernovae 5y agoCurious how much of that rate is because of AirBnB's and VRBOs closing out with no travelers and these units hitting the market vs people moving away...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JasonFruit 5y agoJust so you know, you're dead, and it looks like this comment is what did it. Many of your comments are reasonably substantive, so I thought you should know.
- batter 5y ago"In recent years, New York’s Department of City Planning, which supplies data to the Census Bureau, added 265,000 housing units that had been missing from the bureau’s list"
- yostrovs 5y agoSounds like the equivalent of Miami was missing, but isn't it incredible that housing the size of a city was just "missing" from the data? How is one to believe other data coming from the city offices? The article should be about this discrepancy rather than the political back and forth about the fate of NYC in the eyes of the nation.
- iso1210 5y ago"I understand that this is largely a pre-Covid population, but adding over 600,000 people is like adding the population of Miami."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- the_lonely_road 5y agoThere are so many issues with this article its hard to believe it got past the editors and into publish. The other top comments at time of my posting already covered the most egregious but I will add this one: “I understand that this is largely a pre-Covid population, but adding over 600,000 people is like adding the population of Miami." This is such horseshit that any rational reader should immediate see through it. Miami, the largest city in Florida, and one of the largest cities in the united states, being reduced to just "Miami City" population is an absolute joke. Miami-Dade, with 2,716,940 people in 2019, is the seventh most populous county in the United States. ... Miami metropolitan area, with 6,166,488 people. Census, April 1, 2020 Miami City: 442,241 people. Miami City has only ~600,000 because practically every 4 square mile area of Miami is its own incorporated city like Pinecrest, Coral Gables, etc.
- jonp888 5y agoReminds me a bit of the situation in London. It's entirely true, but highly misleading, to state that the total population of the City of London is between nine and ten thousand people.
- ghaff 5y agoComparisons of both density and total population between different cities are problematic because so much depends on where boundaries that exist for somewhat arbitrary political and historical reasons are drawn. Metropolitan statistical areas sort of give you an upper bound for the latter but not the former. London is a particularly challenging case given that not many people live in the City. (Paris, and to some degree, NYC have the opposite situation where outside of the very core, density is quite a bit lower--especially with Staten Island in the case of NYC.)
- kesselvon 5y agoNot really, because City of London is a borough of London proper and is really just the business district.
- chrismcb 5y agoCity of London is not the same as city of London.
- CountDrewku 5y agoAre these numbers from the census conducted every 10 years? If so isn't entirely possible the numbers are up from 10 years ago but still declining since COVID started?
- j_walter 5y agoYes...but don't let the facts get in the way of the slant of the article trying to convince you nothing is wrong with NYC. Just believe what it's telling you and don't question anything.
- IkmoIkmo 5y agoIn the past year there've been articles about NYC's decline due to the many people leaving the city, unwilling to pay enormous rents when much of the city is closed for a year. With that, three of NYC's motors (continuous inflow of new people with hopes and dreams, an city with a lot of existing cultural infrastructure, and tourism) came to a standstill. To then write an article completely not addressing any of those issues and simply saying that NYC has more people pre-covid 2020 census, than in 2010... is just silly. Especially if you then spend the first quarter of the article immediately explaining that 500k of the 600k of the increase was due to an administrative correction. It's not sure that NYC is in decline, but this article definitely doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary.
- Saturdays 5y agoapart from the obvious issues around pre-covid population and 2020 census stats being used here... I expect a mass exodus once lease renewals are up and buildings don't want to give the same 2-3 months free incentives. This comes from something I've noticed in NYC these past several months. In the winter and up until mid-April, most rental buildings were providing huge incentives (2-3 months off on a 12 month lease) for people to occupy their buildings. What's interesting is that most of the new people I'm meeting in the city ONLY moved to NYC because the city 're-opened' and rent is affordable w/incentives from certain perspectives. Those who have been living in NYC took advantage of incentives to move into nicer/larger spaces - but this is often unaffordable to them once the lease renewals are up. For some perspective, a $5,000/month place with 3 months off, is a net effective rent of $3,750/month. I've seen this go at some upscale buildings. A personal friend of mine can afford this at the $3,750/month rate, but not at any rate above that. If they gave a 1 month free incentive upon renewal, his net effective rent would be $4,580/month. That's one example, but it goes for $3,500/month 1 bedroom in some areas - with 2 months off that's ~$2900/month. So it really depends, but I hear from a lot of new people I meet that they are here for the year and got a great deal on a place - they wanted to experience the city for a year, and this seemed like an affordable time and way to do it (since they can work from home)
- pcdoodle 5y agoI'd love to see what U-Haul has to say about such things. Everyone I follow in NYC, talks about how they're ready to leave.
- ashtonkem 5y agoAnecdote issue aside, there’s an observation bias at work here. People who have no plans to change their living arrangement tend to not talk about that on social media. Meanwhile unhappy people talk a lot more about their intention to change. Also, I’ll note that the ratio of people announcing their intent to leave, and people actually leaving is nowhere close to 1:1.
- chobytes 5y agoI believe it. Lockdowns and covid suck, but living in the city is still better than the alternative.
- ALittleLight 5y agoIf the alternative you've got in mind is dying in the city then I'd agree. Living somewhere else seems much preferable though. New York City is old. Creaking floors and walls, elevators that require you to cross your fingers to rise not too fast or fall not fast. Unpleasant smells and rude comments from passersby assail you with equal frequency when walking on the streets. Restaurants are over, crowded and priced. Apartments are tough to get, expensive, old and small. Walking in the streets at night you'll frequently find yourself flanked by packs of rats. The subways are nice, at least if you are unfamiliar with European cities.
- Proven 5y agoWhat a trashy article! > “This allowed the Census Bureau to enumerate half a million people which they would have otherwise missed" 1) They found 500K unaccounted people (makes you wonder if any of them pay any tax, since they didn't know about them) 2) Maybe (129K) moved in at some point or another, but the whole article doesn't have anything about substantial on those people. We know who high-profile taxpayers who left NYC are and we can estimate how much they paid in tax (using some average or anecdotal value for one percenters). As to these 629K inhabitants, we don't even know if they contribute more than they suck out of the system (I suspect they don't). If city revenue declines, city budgets declines. Having more people sucking on the city teat doesn't help. In fact I would say I'm suspicious they rounded up those 629K people just so that they can apply for more federal help or some shit like that.