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Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Crime, like working from home, is an economic issue

Enough already.

If there was ever a pithy slogan or rallying cry suited for a leader in crisis, the above sentence would be perfect for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and could be applied on at least two fronts: working from home and the Big Apple’s skyrocketing violent crime.

In recent days, Hizzoner has called upon CEOs to curtail generous remote work arrangements that are hampering the city’s recovery efforts (a subject we’ve hit in the Morning Brief recently). Meanwhile, Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul are moving to address deteriorating safety conditions on public transit.

Both issues are interconnected, and have emerged as flashpoints in the city’s halting recovery. In order for workers to come back to offices where estimated occupancy rates are languishing below 30%, a few things need to happen.

Employers must incentivize staff to return to a pre-pandemic office culture that a growing number of sages believe is a relic of the past, at a time when it's become clear that workers are having a hard time letting go of Zoom/Google Meet work habits. But in order to do that, people also need to feel comfortable riding public transportation again, and venturing out into redoubts that increasingly resemble an untamed Gotham City (sorry Batman).

Even the relative safety of home isn’t nearly as secure these days as it used to be (a fact to which I can attest personally, having recently intercepted a would-be "porch pirate" attempting to steal a package). That alone is leading people to flee for other (cheaper) cities and states that don’t tax them for the privilege of living in squalor, bloodshed and generalized dysfunction.

“There’s a very tight relationship between perceptions of crime … and economic prosperity and dynamism,” Rafael Mangual, a senior fellow and head of research at Manhattan Institute’s Policing and Public Safety Initiative, told the Morning Brief in a recent interview.

Traditionally, people have been willing to pay higher costs associated with living in expensive but thriving metropolises like New York, San Francisco (now beset by a crime wave so bad that voters are moving to recall its progressive district attorney), and Los Angeles (the scene of a series of brazen train robberies covered in explicit detail by Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero).

However, Mangual explained living in these places involve trade-offs between public officials and citizens who ultimately pay higher taxes and living costs to enjoy a higher standard of living and convenience. The pandemic era’s deteriorating quality of life has made many citizens question if it's worth the price, the researcher suggested.