Posted on 09/16/2007 9:20:10 AM PDT by lowbridge
Four tales of city dwellers who fled New York
More New Yorkers leave the city every year than move here, a trend highlighted in a population study released last week.
The report showed that in 2005, 300,000 people left New York, and only 200,000 arrived from across the U.S. and other countries to replace them.
The results prompted the Daily News to ask: Why did you say goodbye to New York?
Here are the stories we heard:
He's getting more bang for his bucks
Carlos Thompson and his wife owned a house in Brooklyn and made a decent living as graphic designers, but for years he wanted to escape the city's crippling expenses and the threat of terrorism.
Research led Thompson, 36, to the Charlotte area, where the mortgage on his five-bedroom house costs $1,000 a month - a third of what he was paying in Brooklyn. Plenty of other urbanites have relocated to the same area. His broker and builder were former New Yorkers.
"I'm getting a lot more for my money and saving at the same time," said Thompson, a Trinidadian native and the dad of a 7-year-old daughter.
"I do miss my Caribbean food, but other than that, I wouldn't trade it back."
Salary plus kid didn't compute
The first time the Bogens tried to leave New York, it was a bust.
The couple, high school sweethearts from Kentucky who came to New York for college in 1995, fled to Nashville after 9/11. But instead of finding solace, "we spent a lot of time at home watching TV," said Bonnie, 30.
They moved back in December 2002, scoring a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment for $750 a month. They joined a church and planned to raise a family.
But after their son, Matthew, was born last year, the Bogens slowly realized they could not afford to stay on the salary Josh, 28, made as an NYU computer programmer. They soon returned to Nashville, where they're about to buy a $180,000 house.
Bonnie said she misses New York's street life and diversity, but she's learning to like Nashville, where they're close to their parents, and her husband can come home for lunch. "I think that we have a good balance here," she said.
Bureaucracy drove her away
If you had told Ann Marie Hughes a decade ago that she'd be living in Iowa today, she would have laughed.
Even though her husband grew up in Dubuque, Ann Marie, 38, was a Brooklyn girl from birth. But their plans changed when the couple's third child, Teddy, now 5, developed severe autism. Ann Marie couldn't navigate the city's sluggish bureaucracy to help Teddy and couldn't work while she cared for him.
The couple made the tough decision to send Ann Marie to Iowa with their children while Dan, also 38, stays with relatives in New York for weeks at a time to toil as an ironworker.
For the most part, it has paid off. The family cut their $1,300-a-month housing expense in half, Teddy got help right after the move and the kids can play outside the way Ann Marie remembers doing as a child in Brooklyn.
"I'm living the way I wanted to live in New York," she said.
Same here. I live in a nice quiet subdivision on an acre of land with a nice 2400 sq ft house. NYC has nothing that I want so bad that I'd live there for it.
A nice place to visit...
My one and only time I stayed in NYC more than a few hours was in 1993.
I recall that my first impression of the place, at our hotel not too far from Rockerfeller Center, was the all-permeating smell of sewage....
My only regret was not visiting the Twin Towers during the only opportunity I had in my lifetime...
Well, we have great pizza. :-)
2 plus 2 equals 22! Look it up!
My most persuasive argument: What can you do for future planning by saving $3k a month? And you never need to wonder if you need a gun.
As an ardent proponent of the Second Amendment I could never live in MA.
Instead, they're building monstrosities on neighboring streets and all the parking spots are going away.
Hey!
The graffiti is mostly gone!
Talk about falsehoods. Sheesh.
;-)
Mention divorce and 1/2 of everything including his future pension........
Okay, I'll replace graffiti with bars on the windows. Fair? : )
The best thing coming out of New York is I-95 South!!
And just as intelligible as the newer stuff. ;-)
I am Catholic - no divorce. I am hoping time and discussion will change his mind./Just Asking - seoul62.......
Remind him of the real estate prices in Manhattan, the cost of living, the taxes, and Bill Clinton being within groping distance of you.
(I believe Woody Allen lives in the upper East Side, on East 92nd street, if that helps)
You are right. They come down here and try to change our lifestyle to their terrible liberal views. They can all go back or move to MA or MI where they fit in......
Most of them are moving to Charlotte or Raleigh (I’m in Greensboro) but there I know several here. Greensboro appears to be about the same mix that I’ve always known it (55 liberal/45 conservative in the city, 60 conservative/40 liberal outside the city).
“Most likely trying to recreate New York where she is, they never learn.”
How true. I saw a lot of that in Nashville before I picked up and moved to Colorado. New Yorkers always know better and they don’t mind telling you.
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