New Yorkers are sending a clear message: The city isn’t delivering enough. The Citizens Budget Commission’s recent survey, Straight From New Yorkers, paints a stark picture with residents rating quality of life, public services, and safety well below pre-pandemic levels. Only one-third of New Yorkers rate quality of life positively, and only 11% say the city is wisely spending its $115 billion annual budget.
Alarmingly, New York City’s population began to decline in 2017, then lost nearly half a million residents during the pandemic’s peak.
While the rapid influx of international migrants reversed the population decline over the past few years, domestic migration is still a net negative: more people are leaving New York City for other parts of the country than moving in.
For example, New York City lost more than 100,000 net residents and their $13.7 billion in personal income to Florida between 2018 and 2022. Affordability, concerns about safety, lack of space, and high taxes are driving more New Yorkers to leave the city for other places.
New York has overcome great challenges before. In 1975, the city teetered on bankruptcy, having papered over deficits with borrowed money to fund unaffordable programs. Hitting a fiscal wall, the city slashed services and residents fled. But that crisis became our comeback blueprint. Government, business, and labor united to stop the slide and restore fiscal discipline and accountability, laying the foundation for decades of growth.
Today, New York needs the same reset. With elections energizing conversations about the city’s future, we need to face facts: New York has all the ingredients to be the greatest magnet for talent and epicenter of opportunity but will succeed only if our leaders make smart choices. We need decisive leadership, bold action, and public support for sound fiscal policy and relentless management that strengthens services while maintaining long-term stability.
That’s why CBC is launching Smart Choices, Better Future — our call to action to restore New York’s competitive edge.
First, we need to get the city’s finances in order. The city’s spending is outpacing revenue while federal cuts loom. Budget gaps aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet — they show the city is spending more money than it can afford and telegraph damaging future cuts to essential services.
Leaders should choose to trim spending to sustainable levels, build up rainy day funds during good times, and negotiate labor deals that balance fair wages with fiscal reality.
Second, New Yorkers should get what they pay for, so we need to deliver services that work. It takes the city six months to place a homeless household into a newly constructed unit, during which time it stays vacant. Leaders need to choose management systems that deliver results and hold officials accountable.
Let’s focus on evidence-based programs in education and mental health and make the hard choice to eliminate ineffective initiatives, regardless of their political popularity.
Third, we need to make the city affordable, safe, and livable. Amidst our highest-in-the-nation taxes, too-costly housing, and public safety concerns, more and more New Yorkers are finding it harder to justify staying here, making us all worse off.
We must choose to hold the line on taxes, pull out all the stops to boost housing production, make public spaces vibrant, and use only the tax incentives proven to grow our economy.
Finally, we need to build for New York’s future. Our aging infrastructure isn’t just inconvenient — it’s in dire shape and increasingly costly. Grand public works may puff civic pride, but we need to first choose to get our roads, bridges, and buildings into good shape or we will have no foundation on which to build our future economy. Choosing standardized over customized designs isn’t sexy but saves money.
The choices made by the mayor elected this November — and supported by the people — will determine whether New York becomes a cautionary tale or a comeback story. New York’s greatest strength has always been its ability to reinvent itself. Today, New York must choose evidence-based governance over the politics of unattainable promises.
The ingredients for success are here. The question is whether leaders are ambitious enough to pursue big goals and pragmatic enough to deliver them. New York’s future depends on making smart choices today for a better future tomorrow.
Rein is the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic think tank and watchdog.