New York’s Businesses Won’t Thrive If Their Employees Can’t Afford to Live Here
By Yasser Salem
Business owners and leaders in New York City face a stark reality: More than half of their workers can’t afford to live here and are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on housing.
Other numbers tell a dire story. Washington Heights, once one of Manhattan’s last affordable refuges for working families, lost 48% of residents under 18 and 14% of all residents between 2000 and 2020. More broadly, half a million New Yorkers left the city in the last five years—not because of tax rates, but because they can’t afford to stay