By Guerino Tondreau
July 28, 2021
Abstract:
February of 2020 marked the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in America. There was an initial belief that we would be able to control the spread of this relatively novel virus. Lockdowns and other restrictions were adopted on a state-by-state basis, starting in March. Almost as soon as these covid restrictions were put in place people began exploring their options and migrating away from historically densely populated urban areas for what they assumed would be a short time. These moves occurred across the United States and saw most people move out of their city residences but stay within their home states. The influx of movers and lack of existing homes also caused home prices to balloon, allowing sellers to inflate their prices temporarily.
Introduction:
Several states had no choice but to go into a lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic. States instituted these lockdown orders independently of one another, with origin dates ranging from March 19th of 2020 all the way to April 7th. In the end forty-four states had stay at home orders in place for some different ranges of time. This lockdown forced the closure of many businesses, and schools alike. Many families lost their jobs putting them at risk of losing their homes and being unable to provide and care for themselves and their families. Students were forced off campus causing them to have to return home to live with their families. Non-essential businesses had to close their doors as well under the lockdown orders.
Where were these people moving?
The simple answer is that people were moving out of big cities and branching out to smaller towns in proximity to their previous metro area. The cities that suffered the biggest losses in population were New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. An obvious argument would be that big cities must have more residents who move out on a daily basis regardless of covid-19. While this is true, the amount of movers in 2020 compared to 2019 was drastically different. In New York for example, data shows that only about 19,000 movers left the Big Apple between February and June. In comparison, approximately 111,000 people moved out of New York City the following year in that same time range. This is a 487 percent increase in movers from one year to the next. These figures help to better paint the picture that people were flocking away from cities in droves.
That does not answer the question of where these people are moving, however. The places that saw the most growth belong to the state of Texas. Small cities like Katy, Richmond, and Frisco Texas gained the most residents. However, from city to city the gains were very small. Larger cities lost an exponentially greater number of losses than smaller ones saw gains. The biggest gain that was reported was slightly less than 4,500 new residents. This shows that people did not flock to one area all at once. Instead movers were more spread apart, sparsely populating smaller towns and cities.
Why are they moving:
There are many reasons why people decided to move during the pandemic. One of the main reasons why people chose to move away from their prior place of residents was because their jobs became remote. This negated the need to commute for work. Therefore, people could initially explore temporary moves out of state for cheaper rent, during the indefinite lockdown, a change of scenery, as well as other reasons. Countless businesses closed their doors permanently. This caused many Americans around the country to lose their jobs. Job loss managed to provoke many people to flee from their congested and expensive lives in urban areas. With little to no money coming in many of these people had to move in with family members and friends. They would also go to areas with more relaxed restrictions in an effort to continue earning money in some way shape or form. The “mass exodus” of people from urban areas like Manhattan and Los Angeles is an important consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Many people were forced to move away temporarily, but when these moves last longer than six months you can no longer refer to them as just temporary in nature. One group of people who were forced to relocate at comprised of college students living on or around their college campuses. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, universities throughout the United States had to close down their dorms in an attempt to control and mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Consequently, all their students had to evacuate those campuses and return to their homes. Students living on campus may have been forced to move back home by the school under the guise that it would have been a temporary situation. A survey done showed that sixty one percent of the people who were displaced by the lockdown moved back in with their parents or other family members by June. This “temporary arrangement” has lasted close to a year for a lot of these people. That same survey referenced showed that forty two percent of those people still were living in their family member homes in November of 2020. Although the evacuation of all college campuses was not mandated by lawmakers, it is an example of rules being used on a temporary basis but being prolonged into a more permanent situation. The public colleges however would have been forced to follow whatever evacuation orders that were put in place due to the lockdown.
Besides college students, other groups of people moved for other reasons which include a need to leave their cramped apartments in the city for more spacious room to ride out the lockdown and to improve their chance of avoiding exposure to the virus. An example of this would be many affluent residents of New York City decided to leave the city and relocate to East Hampton, Long Island where it was more spacious and less congested. These wealthy individuals chose instead to move into their vacation homes or their secondary living accommodations. Unlike some other people these individuals had the financial ability to purchase vacation homes outside of the city, or they may have already acquired them. It was relatively easy for them to leave their permanent city dwellings for their vacation homes. People in those situations are the most likely ones to return to the city. The affluent people did not necessarily move out of the city because of a financial hardship as a consequence of the lockdown and closure of many jobs. Instead they moved because it provided them more comfort, freedom, and safety against the virus.
Their decision to relocate themselves and their families was primarily related to health concerns and restrictions to their ease of living. They were concerned about protecting their health and that of their loved ones, as well as continuing to live as comfortably as possible giving their current situations. A survey showed that eighteen percent of the people who moved during the pandemic just wanted more space. Stay at home orders caused a multitude of people to be displaced from the permanent place a dwelling for an abundance of different reasons. In the case of the rich people who moved out of New York City and other cities across the country, it was a case of them having the means and resources to live their lives as comfortably as they possibly could and circumvent the stay-at-home order by any means.
People who were renting on a month-to-month basis or leasing their apartments or homes left their respective big cities for a completely different reason. Reason for their moves include relocating due to work, needing more affordable lodging, and moving because they can now work remotely from anywhere. Cost of living greatly affected many peoples’ decision to move, “In November, a third of U.S. adults who moved due to the pandemic cited financial problems as the most important reason they relocated”. A great number of these cities’ inhabitants nationwide were severely and negatively impacted by the closure of the job market due to the lockdown. Many city residents lost their jobs and effectively their means of earning a living wage. Therefore, it made sense for them to leave their overpriced city apartments for more affordable living arrangements found elsewhere. They oftentimes were able to find cheaper housing farther away. In this example the cost of living was negatively impacted by the stay-at-home order instituted by the lawmakers nationwide. Hastily they made decisions to close businesses across America but did not make the proper efforts to ensure life around the country could be sustained.
There were others who did not actually lose their employment. Instead, they were required to work from home. They were able to effectively work remotely. They were no longer required to commute to their offices. Some of these people chose to live in the city to avoid the commuting stress and complications. Once their jobs became remote, they quickly realized that they didn’t need to maintain their residence in the city. This has also allowed them to increase their savings and improve their lifestyle. Considering that, it was relatively easy for them to relocate to another less expensive accommodation. Survey showed that seventeen percent of the people who moved chose to do so because they no longer had to commute. At the same time, migrating to a more spacious and less congested environment had reduced their potential risk of exposure due to this highly contagious and deadly virus. One can clearly see why it made sense for these people to temporarily move out of the city until they are required to come back to their offices daily. Here we see that the stay-at-home order provided these people the freedom to enjoy their employment as well as the added benefit of not having to leaving their homes for a lengthy commute.
Another factor that can be mentioned is covid related legislation which has played a large role in all these migratory activities. States like New York, and New Jersey have had a staunch position on the coronavirus since the dawn of the pandemic. The evidence shows that New York was one of the first five states to implement stay at home orders in the United States. The Governor of New York was quick to initiate a total lockdown of the state. In addition, he used his executive order power to shut down bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc. This decision ultimately led to the loss of many jobs which increased the financial hardship for a great number of New Yorkers.
In contrast states like Texas and Georgia resisted implementing those harsh guidelines at the beginning of the pandemic. They didn’t adopt the total lockdown approach which has nearly decimated many local economies. These states chose a different method to “control” the spread of the coronavirus for a shorter period than other states. They either lifted or eased most of the Covid-19 restrictions much earlier than their Democrat counterparts. The main difference in legislation here is done by party line. That is, the states that had a democrat as governor were more sympathetic to the draconian concept of total lockdown than states governed by a republican governor.
About how many people have really moved:
There was an abundance if temporary and permanent change of address requests stemming from February of 2020. The data shows that approximately 1.5 million Americans moved from their home in the cities and opted to transition to the suburbs on a temporary basis within the first six months of the pandemic This means that a mass migration occurred from February 2020 to July 2020. Furthermore, in the months of March and April alone, the data shows that more than half a million people submitted temporary change of address requests. This means that more than 500,000 people migrated from one area to another area within the first two months of the nationwide lockdown. A loss like that is a relatively large increase of change of address requests compared to approximately four hundred fifty thousand that were submitted in 2019 between the same two months in question.
It is also reported that in 2020, between the months of February and July, nearly one hundred ten thousand people moved out of New York City. This represents a 1.4 percent loss in the population of New York City. This loss in population has in turn impacted the economy of the city. It represents a loss of revenue to the city. In comparison, in 2019 approximately nineteen thousand people moved out of the city. That is an almost five hundred percent increase from one year to the next. This increase is directly associated with the coronavirus pandemic given the time at which the moves occurred. Based on this observation, one can clearly assess and appreciate the devastating impact of this virus on the United States population.
Is the influx in moves due to the coronavirus?
A review of the data shows that there was a much larger number of movers in 2020 than in the prior year, early in the pandemic. This is most noticeably observed in the month of March. For instance, it is reported that nearly 2.9 million people moved permanently in the month of March. However, in 2019 there were only 2.4 million permanent movers in the month of March. This accounts for an excess of half a million of Americans who decided to relocate to other less crowded communities permanently. Temporary moves increased from 165,000 in March of 2019 to in March of 2020 363,000. A survey taken in June of 2020, well after the peak of the urban exodus, showed that only 28 percent of people blamed covid concerns directly for their moves. However, had the survey been taken in March, one could assume there would be a different conclusion, and much higher percentage of covid influenced moves.
Are these moves permanent or temporary:
Although the lockdowns were meant to be a temporary response to the rapid spread of the coronavirus, people in major cities fled their homes almost immediately. It is reported that in 2020 the total number of permanent movers is almost twice the total amount of temporary change of address requests. However, the percentage increase in temporary movers was substantially larger than that of permanent movers. Densely populated cities, like New York City, became less popular during the onset of the pandemic than prior to the pandemic, whereas suburban towns like Katy Texas saw a larger influx of residents during that same period. According to the experts, the Covid-19 virus spreads easily in these areas of dense population. A dense or congested area makes it very difficult to follow the social distancing guideline. This is something that the experts from the CDC were strongly advocating for at the peak of the pandemic. Hence, it makes sense that people in these areas would look to move away, to curb the possibility of being exposed and infected by the virus. This could partially explain why states like Texas saw net gains in their population from 2019 to 2020.
Movers to places like Texas are most like of the permanent variety. With businesses flocking to the “Lone Star State” employees will likely need to find residence within the state as well. People who moved out of cities in their states to suburban areas are likely to eventually migrate back to their living experience.
How did covid affect real estate prices:
The pandemic has caused a buying frenzy. People have become more interested in being homeowners. This has caused prices for homes to skyrocket. Although there are so many people looking to buy homes, there are not enough homes for them. There is currently a shortage in home on the market. As people realized they could be confined to the residence at any point in the future, they’ve realized that they wanted to have more desirable living accommodations. This helped to push the pandemic home buying frenzy. With more buyers on the market, and less homes for sale there are more people willing to “bid-up” on homes. This has helped created the soaring home prices we are seeing now.
Conclusion:
It has affected the American people in various ways which include loss of income, destabilization of communities and massive migration of people. Its effect on the US economy is profound and long lasting. This pandemic has caused the loss of many jobs and industries. Many small businesses were forced to close and suffered irreparable financial losses which severely jeopardized their survival. The pandemic has also fostered many changes in the traditional method of doing business. A few businesses had to go remote. This is relatively a new unchartered territory for many business entities. Some of the changes brought by the pandemic will become part of the fabric of our society.
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