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<\/p>\nTimes Square is quiet, Broadway is dark, offices are empty.<\/p>\n
As New York City staggers though January, the cost of this pandemic, both in lives and livelihoods, just keeps rising.<\/p>\n
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Caseloads remain stubbornly high, and the numbers look daunting. Unemployment in the Bronx, poorest of the five boroughs, is hovering around 16%. Across New York, the number of visitors is expected to reach just over half its pre-pandemic heights. A third of the city\u2019s 230,000 neighborhood businesses might not make it until vaccines become widely available.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really going to be tough still in the coming months,\u201d said Tim Tompkins, former head of the Times Square Alliance, which hosted its annual New Year\u2019s Eve celebration without the public for the first time in more than a century.<\/p>\n
Just last week, the city reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases, surpassing its high in April. The vaccine\u2019s rollout, meanwhile, has been slow and uneven, despite efforts to expand access and speed up distribution.<\/p>\n
This year, the city\u2019s businesses may add back fewer than 30% of the roughly 662,000 jobs it cut in 2020, a recent report by the Independent Budget Office showed. Joblessness will remain elevated, likely averaging almost 14%.<\/p>\n
Tourism, in particular, could take years to recover to pre-Covid levels. According to IBO forecasts, it will be at least 2024 before the leisure and hospitality industry \u2014 which includes hotels, restaurants and theaters \u2014 recoups even a third of the 217,000 jobs it hemorrhaged last year.<\/p>\n
At Marriott International Inc.\u2019s Times Square location, the temporary layoffs of 852 workers that began last year will become permanent. The Hudson Hotel, which already cut loose 191 workers, said it would temporarily cease operations and lay off its 12 remaining employees.<\/p>\n
What remained of the staff at the hotel, founded as a women\u2019s club by the daughter of John Pierpont Morgan, spent its last days selling the hotel\u2019s cleaning supplies and travel cribs on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Without jobs, many longtime city dwellers are being forced to leave. Many others, particularly the wealthy with the freedom to work from home, are choosing warmer, cheaper places like Palm Beach, taking their tax revenue with them. This month, Virtu Financial Inc. became yet another finance firm to announce plans to move workers to Florida.<\/p>\n
All told, some 70,000 more people left the New York City area than moved in, taking their incomes with them, according to a December report from Unacast, an analytics firm that used anonymized mobile-phone data.<\/p>\n
The economic disparity caused by the pandemic-induced flight \u2014 equal to $34 billion in lost income on a net basis \u2014 will be hard to make up. (Unacast said that since its report was first published, updated figures show the net loss has swelled to 93,000 people for the year.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new people in town make considerably less money than those who lived there before,\u201d wrote Thomas Walle, Unacast\u2019s CEO and one of the report\u2019s co-authors. \u201cThey can afford less in terms of mortgages, rent, restaurants, retail and other consumer expenditures.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exodus is already reflected in near record-high vacancy rates and plummeting co-op and condo sales \u2014 not to mention a glut of multimillion-dollar pied-\u00e0-terres. Manhattan\u2019s supply of office space has steadily grown since March, hitting highs not seen since the 2000s.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a situation the cash-strapped city can ill-afford. Property taxes are the largest and most stable form of tax revenue. Those collections will likely rise just 3.5% this fiscal year, the smallest increase in over a decade.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s doubt whether the city will be able to bring in even that much. The New York State Comptroller\u2019s office warned last month that 15% of landlords worry they may not make their property tax payments in January. Among low-income New Yorkers, more than half say they\u2019re already behind or will fall behind on their rent or mortgage in a few months. And a recent survey showed that apartment tenants owed over $1 billion in unpaid rent.<\/p>\n
The state recently extended a halt to foreclosures and evictions, but it may merely delay the inevitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one knows what happens when that moratorium on evictions ends and suddenly you have tens of thousands of small businesses that owe 10, 11, or 12 months of back rent and the same way with residential tenants who haven\u2019t been able to pay,\u201d said Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City. \u201cThose big policy questions are what\u2019s hanging over our head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet despite it all, there are still glimmers of hope.<\/p>\n
Foremost is the vaccine, which despite the rollout\u2019s hiccups, could let businesses reopen and get employees back to work by spring or summer. Optimism is building that the Biden administration will provide additional federal aid and earmark money directly for states and cities.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, BlackRock Inc., the world\u2019s largest asset manager, reiterated its commitment to stay in New York and relocate to its new, expanded headquarters in Hudson Yards on the far west side of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The pandemic also brought a renewed sense of community to neighborhoods across New York, as families gathered at outdoor restaurants or stopped to listen to musicians who performed impromptu concerts on closed streets.<\/p>\n
Then, there are people like Yudai Kanayama, who runs Dr. Clark, a Japanese restaurant in Chinatown.<\/p>\n
His establishment was all set to open March 15, the day the city screeched to a halt. For a while, he made-do on takeout and delivery. These days, diners clamor for reservations to grill lamb at its outdoor kotatsu tables, which are heated from the bottom. It\u2019s been a welcome boon during a disastrous time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen everybody was feeling down,\u201d Kanayama says, \u201cwe wanted to be the one giving the positive energy to people.\u201d<\/p>\n