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.
People Abandoning New York State, New Data Indicates
And, more recently....
Failing grade for Chemung National economic study gives F to 31 New York counties.
Note to the nation: Keep voting for 'Rats and RINOs and all this, too, can by yours...
Have him comitted.
ping
I was just kidding . Don't know what to tell you other than you have major problems considering he is also a Clinton fan..........
There probably isn’t anything you can do. My wife convinced me to move to the country in 1994. I somehow lasted almost 10 years before I told her we had to move back to civilization for my sanity. Country life, or even small town life isn’t for everyone.
I’m working on it! ;-)
When I was growing up we were told everybody outside NYC were hicks and rednecks, there were no jobs except low paying ones anywhere ouside NYC and that we were tougher and better than anyopne else because we lived in the "Big Apple" and "if we could make it there we could make it anywhere"
I escaped 15 years ago at the age of 29 and only wish I left 20 years sooner.
NYC... A great place to visit, but you have to be rich or insane to want to live there. Often, the two are combined. Of course, those born and raised in NYC believe it is the center of the Western World, er... center of the known Universe, actually.
Sitting on a tour bus in NYC, an ambulance came up behind us in gridlock. The ambulance squeezed by eventually but it must have missed 4 light cycles before getting through the street light to the next block of gridlock. By then, it had long since turned off it’s siren and was just flashing it’s lights. The street was packed and there was simply nowhere for it to go.
I sat watching that Ambulance locked in traffic and thought, “buddy, you are going to die.” LOL!
You say that like it isn't true. ;-)
lowbridge (Born in Brooklyn, NY. Or, as Ed Norton of The Honeymooners puts it: "I live in the garden spot of the world: Brooklyn, USA!")
The author must be a graduate of the NY public schools....
I’m not a fan of city-living, but after checking into Nashville activities on the web, it’s hard to believe that the Bogens couldn’t find anything better to do than to watch TV.
You may not understand traffic in NYC. There are times when there are no open lanes anywhere, in any direction. The lanes in all 4 directions are completely clogged with traffic and even the intersection is clogged. It is gridlocked. Trying to get anybody to move out of anybody else’s way becomes difficult because nobody can move to create an opening for anybody else to move into.
And ambulances just sit there and wait like everybody else because their is nowhere for anybody to move out of their way.
Welcome to the Insanity if NYC. A great place to visit but hell on earth if you had to live there. You almost couldn’t pay me enough. I say “almost” because, obviously, if you paid me enough, I would have a limo, chauffeur and helicopter pad, etc... and living life on my own schedule. Otherwise, you can flush the whole city. It’s a mess.
GREAT, GREAT fun to visit, though. I have to confess, half the fun is watching what a circus and zoo the place is.
Yes I have seen NYC several times...... and that was enough. LOL!
Houston has Life Flight helicopters, surely NY has those.
What the Daily News is NOT telling you is that a slight majority of those leaving are black or hispanic, different from the waves of “flight” in the past.
You said it better than I ever could have. It was exactly like I awoke from a long sleep. I guess some people love it, but it wasn’t for. Even the people were something else. I never even began to fit in.
Couldn’t wait to get here and I never want to leave. I LOVE the sound of honking car horns.
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