’Urban Flight’ Is A Thing, But Not For The Reasons You Think
Is the possibility of remote work fueling urban flight? Well, no. According to a November 2020 Pew survey (detailed in Alan Ehrenhalt’s excellent article below), just 1% of those who had relocated amidst COVID-19 did so for that reason, and only 2% were looking for more space – percentages so low that they were buried in a footnote. Movers were not primarily the young (professional/work-from-home/relatively affluent) couples in family-formation stage who have been endlessly profiled in news stories on the subject; rather, they were far, far more likely to be lower-income households (due to job/financial loss) and students (because campuses had been closed to in-person instruction). 42% of them had moved back in with family! In other words, take the anecdote-filled articles in the mainline (and even the business) press with a couple grains of salt, and stay laser-focused on what the data is actually telling us.