Wealthy New Yorkers who left the metropolis during the pandemic are not expected to return

Many New Yorkers believe that life in the city will be better without the rich. Some even say that wealthy townspeople who left the metropolis at a difficult moment betrayed him. And there are those who argue that the rich will return as soon as the loyal New Yorkers after the quarantine put the city in order. This is reported on the website news.mail.ru.

During the quarantine, employees of most enterprises began to work remotely.

Then the self-isolation regime was canceled, but many companies continued to work remotely.

The wealthy residents of the metropolis rushed to leave during the quarantine and settled in private residences. And New York was named worst state from the point of view of economic prospects.

Now the residents of the financial center are waiting without enthusiasm for the return of the rich. They believe that the city will only be transformed in their absence, it will become more accessible and cleaner.

Even at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthy New Yorkers who could afford to go out of town to their villas or rent a house to wait out the quarantine there left the metropolis. Residents of nearby resort towns were not happy with them, fearing that they would bring the coronavirus with them.

Now that it's time to return, wealthy New Yorkers are not expected to return. Local residents, who remained in the city in the midst of the pandemic and massive protests against racial discrimination, are expressing their discontent with the return of wealthy citizens. “Let them continue to sit in their residences,” they declare.

A columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian even jokingly suggested building a wall to prevent the return of New Yorkers, who "betrayed the city by leaving it at a difficult moment."

“It's the same with other megacities from which the rich fled: if you leave the city in times of need, you give up your right to return,” said New York-based journalist Arva Mahdavi.

She believes that such a decision will benefit the city - the cost of rent for housing will decrease, cars and traffic jams will decrease. Plus, Americans who work from home don't have to travel to the office, so life in general will be easier.

As many American media wrote, large shopping centers are leaving Manhattan because it becomes unprofitable - New Yorkers are now more likely to shop online.

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They also wrote that wealthy residents of countries, especially those affected by the pandemic, began to buy citizenship of other states, where the epidemiological situation is more favorable.

Former hedge fund manager James Altacher wrote on LinkedIn that "New York is dead forever." He believes that since wealthy New Yorkers now work from the suburbs, and big business moves its offices and representative offices to other cities or operates in a remote format, New York has come to an end as the business capital of the world.

However, Mahdavi disputes this point of view. This is just one of the waves of gentrification - a phenomenon that urban studies call the resettlement of the solvent urban elite from the center to the suburbs and residential areas, she said.

On August 29, Greg Kelly, a conservative American news anchor, tweeted a video showing New Yorkers queuing up for truck rentals. He suggested that people are leaving forever. “A catastrophic decline in the quality of life - enough for people,” he signed the video.

But here too Mahdavi expressed her disagreement. The journalist recalled that August is the peak of the moving season in New York. At this time, the number of tenants exceeds the number of homeowners, there is competition for living space. This is because most leases will expire on September 1.

The same idea is confirmed by other townspeople who left their comments under the host's tweet. One of them, Jeanette D'Elia, who works as a realtor in New York, has seen an increase in property buyers since the start of the pandemic.

Mahdawi wrote in her column that Kelly did not understand why people were actually crowding in front of the trucks.

The journalist also mentions articles that predicted the end of the city as it was before the pandemic. This was explained by the fact that business switched to a remote format of work, and this makes it possible to decentralize all processes closed in the business capital of the United States.

But not only New York faced the massive relocation of its residents. During the quarantine, many people around the world changed their place of residence, moving from the capital to the regions, from cities to dachas and villages.

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But the rich New Yorkers who left the city will return, the journalist is sure. This will happen when those who remain will sort out all the troubles and put the city in order.

Because people always come to New York for its infectious energy, which can only be obtained where the diversity of cultures and people is concentrated. It is in the Big Apple that many minorities feel safe and can be themselves.