As New Yorkers flee, the suburbs are under siege

‘Land of the Flee’, screamed the New York Post front page this week. Moving vans are lining up in Manhattan. Residents have had enough. It had been ‘another bloody weekend in Gotham’ with 21 people shot, and a rising wave of non-gun violence. At 11 a.m. on Saturday, a man leapt on top of a young woman on a subway platform in midtown and began grinding against her until a group of bystanders forced him to stop. You can watch the whole thing on video and decide never to take public transport again.

Living in New York has always felt like walking on a very narrow beam. The chasms on either side are the thrill of it. They create extremes of excitement, anxiety, achievement and despair. But many are now deciding: to hell with the city that never sleeps. For a solid eight hours of rest, uninterrupted by thoughts of the virus, nosebleed property prices, crowded subways, faltering public schools, socially grotesque private ones, and the mentally ill defecating on your doorstep, the suburbs give you a better shot.

Demand for housing in the suburbs has exploded. Estate agents are reporting bidding wars and cash offers on even the most humdrum properties, provided they have space for a home office and access to a reasonable school system. As home sales in Manhattan have fallen by half, they are doubling in the ’burbs. All those families who once said they could never leave the grit and life of New York now want nothing more than a two-car garage and a basketball hoop in the driveway.

In the 1950s and 1960s, they called this phenomenon ‘white flight’. As America’s cities succumbed to crime waves, rioting and racial tension, white people ran for the suburbs.