New York is bouncing back from the brink

It’s facing a cash shortfall and rising crime but, reports Philip Delves Broughton, the Big Apple is slowly returning to normal

A MONTH ago, the streets of New York were eerily bare. All day, every day felt like early Sunday morning. It is still unsettlingly easy to park in Manhattan, and the subways are empty and clean. But bars and restaurants have found ways to fill the pavements with tables, separated often by perspex screens.

Hundreds of thousands of office workers are back, but swathes of midtown Manhattan are still quiet in the middle of the day. Yet every night, you can hear fireworks being let off in streets all over.

Nearly half a million of the city’s richest residents left in the early weeks of the pandemic, and their neighbourhoods in the Upper East Side, the West Village and Tribeca are still notably empty. Many are now wondering if it is worth coming back this year while fears of a second spike persist.

For older New Yorkers, it is starting to feel like the Seventies again, before the city was scrubbed up to its recent family-friendly sheen.

Last week, basketball and tennis courts reopened and dog runs and personal care services returned in the third phase of the state’s reopening plan. Finally, people could get massages, waxing and manicures.

On Monday, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, released a surreal poster titled “New York Tough”. He designed it himself, he said.

The general message is that New York state, depicted as an isolated mountain, has come through the worst, including the deaths of some 32,000 people, 22,000 in New York city alone. This despite being let down by the federal government, depicted as President Trump sitting on a crescent moon with the words: “It’s just the flu.”

In March, New York was the epicentre of the pandemic. Tens of thousands of people were hospitalised. Intensive care wards were overwhelmed. President Trump sent a hospital ship to moor itself next to Manhattan. This past weekend, the city experienced the first 24-hour period in months without a single coronavirus death. Just two per cent of people in New York who are tested are getting positive results for the virus, compared with 26 per cent in Miami.

But the city still faces enormous hurdles. The unemployment rate is close to 20 per cent, the highest since the Great Depression of the Thirties. By comparison, in the slowdown after 2008, the city’s jobless rate peaked at 10 per cent.

What began as furloughs are turning into lay-offs. The shutdown forced a million people out of work, and many of them remain unemployed. The poorest areas of the city, such as the Bronx, have been worst hit by a combination of sickness,

Back in business: diners are returning to New York’s streets just weeks after Donald Trump sent in a hospital ship

The city has experienced the first 24-hour period in months without a single coronavirus death

economic hardship and fears about a tightening of immigration rules under the Trump administration.

The initial flood of government aid to companies has slowed to a trickle. Many of the city’s main industries — hospitality, theatre, art — remain closed entirely or badly hobbled. Theatres along Broadway, closed on March 12, are not expecting to reopen until early spring.

Restaurants were looking forward to the reintroduction of indoor dining this month, but that has been postponed due to the resurgence of coronavirus cases across the country. But Wall Street is doing well. Goldman Sachs delivered booming profits this week, driven by trading in a period of extreme volatility.

The city’s budget, however, is a shambles. The shutdown has left it $9 billion short in taxes this year alone. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, is scrambling to find cuts just as the city needs help on every front. New York is planning to reopen schools in September, but students will have staggered schedules to ensure social distancing.

The general stress appears to have helped drive a resurgence of gun violence. Over the weekend, 53 people were shot, four fatally. There were 634 shootings in 2020 versus 394 over the same period in 2019.

Since 1990, when there were at least six murders a day in the city, violent crime in New York has plummeted. Last year, there were about 320 murders, less than one a day. Police are now concerned that as hostility to the police increases, crime will rise sharply.