(Matthew Doarnberger, Headline USA) A recent survey conducted by the Citizens Budget Commission revealed that only half of the respondents in New York City desire to stay there for the next five years.
This was a decline from over 58% who said they planned to stay in the city for at least a five year duration when the same question was asked in 2017.
The appeal of exiting “The Big Apple” seemed to coincide with the significant reduction in how residents viewed their quality of life, as well as concerns over general safety throughout the city.
When surveyed, only 30% of locals rated their quality of life as either “excellent” or “good,” down from 50% compared just seven years ago.
Those same New Yorkers also felt less safe than they did during the same time period.
The percentage who rated public safety in their neighborhoods as either “excellent” or “good” declined from 50% to 37%.
With several high-profile cases of subway attacks having made national news, even prompting New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently to dispatch the National Guard to assist with security, feeling safe on the subway during the day experienced a drop of 81.5% to 49.1%.
That same concern was displayed by nighttime subway riders as those feelings of safety fell from 46% to 22%.
Ana Champeny, yhe vice president of the CBC, outlined what she thought the city needed to do in order to reverse these trends.
“The city needs to focus on the basics—safety, cleanliness, delivering high-quality services,” she said.
Doing these things would go a long way in making sure it “remains a competitive and attractive place to live and work,” she added.
This focus needs to come sooner rather than later, as the state of New York leads the nation in migration to other areas.
It is also estimated the over a trillion dollars in assets have left the state since the COVID pandemic in 2020.
All of this has also led to population shifts that caused the state to lose a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census.
Ironically, the efforts to import new citizens and bring additional political power to the state by adding more congressional seats might, in fact, fuel even more migration out of the state, while also eroding the tax base of citizens needed to pay for New York to subsidize its growing population of illegal immigrants.
