City & State New York
It’s suddenly hard to avoid all the self-indulgent op-eds describing why their authors are leaving New York. But there have been predictions of the city’s demise before.
Like the mythical Phoenix that rises from the ashes, New York City will make a powerful comeback in the coming years and will once again prove to the naysayers that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. In just my lifetime, since the early 1960s, I have witnessed multiple crises that have challenged our great city: in 1968 the assassination of both New York Sen. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in the same year that student protestors at Columbia University shocked the country by taking over school buildings; the fiscal crisis and rampant crime of the 1970s, epitomized by famous movies such as “Death Wish;” the crack epidemic and racist violence in Howard Beach in the 1980s; the first World Trade Center bombing and the Crown Heights riot in the 1990s; 9/11 and the Great Recession in the aughts; Hurricane Sandy, widening inequality and the tragic ascendancy of New York’s least favorite billionaire to the White House in
the teens. Through it all, New York City has persevered. Abandonment, arson and blight have been supplanted by waves of new immigrants and the innovation and rebuilding that was needed to get New York back on track. And in the first year of this new decade, New York is now very slowly emerging from our greatest challenges ever: a twin health and economic crisis with an overlay of frequent clashes between protesters and police over criminal justice reforms and the widening inequality that the COVID19 crisis has exposed in an even harsher light. These past six months have felt like a collective nightmare that we cannot just shrug off and move on from — this multiple cascading of crises has brought our city to its proverbial knees: Almost half a million New Yorkers have fled the city, the unemployment rate hovers at a mind-boggling 20%, small businesses and retailers are shuttering for good, the crime rate is
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shooting up for the first time in two decades and hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are facing eviction and food shortages that were unimaginable just a year ago. This is an extremely deep hole to climb out of, so where do we start? Who will rise up, as the New York Times lamented, to be the ultimate civic cheerleader like former Mayor Ed Koch and the shrewd uniter of labor and business like former Gov. Hugh Carey in another crisis-ridden era? We must think strategically in the shortterm and medium-term to douse these multiple bonfires. (As famous economist John Maynard Keynes famously said about focusing long-term: “In the long run, we’re all dead.”) First and foremost, we must continue to tamp down the COVID-19 crisis in our city through the scientific mitigation measures that are working: mandatory mask wearing, extreme social distancing, limiting of crowds in indoor spaces, widespread testing and tracing and vigilant hand-washing and hygiene. If these containment measures prolong our economic challenges for the next few months, it is the steep price we have to pay to right the ship of state for the next decade. As the governor reminds us each day, we can’t let our guard down – lest we become Florida or Texas or other hotspots in this country that reopened way too quickly. Also in the short term, we must prove that public education can be executed well, despite the challenges we face this fall and winter. Right now, City Hall has divergent views from the teachers and principals unions. This will not lead to the smooth, synchronous rollout of the new school year that will be essential. I’m a big believer that outdoor learning, at least for middle school and high school students, will be a necessary ingredient to ensure that we have a relatively safe fall semester while we patiently await a vaccine in early 2021. Colleges must also be creative and erect outdoor tents and use their campuses to facilitate outdoor learning. We also must avert the looming housing crisis – the city should work with residential landlords to devise a program that allows for forbearance in rent payments for those adversely impacted by large-scale unemployment. At the same time, the city and the state need to help landlords get through this period with a combination of tax breaks and bridge loans so that they can work out longer term repayment schedules with their economically challenged tenants. The city must also figure out how to reverse the retail apocalypse in New York, particularly in Manhattan. Large chains and big restaurants are fleeing, much like the flight of well-heeled New Yorkers to