New York City’s storefronts are not as alluring as they once were. The brutal statistics coming out are bad—but wholly predictable—news.
Another Doom Loop commentary.
This from survivethenews.com.
(See: Def-Con News article St. Louis MO Is Dying—The Cause Is Liberalism, 4-12-24.)
As of 2024, 11.2 percent of the city’s storefronts are sitting vacant. This is up from 6 percent in 2019. That does not seem like a huge number, but that 5.2 percentage point increase translates into an 86% percent increase from 2019 to 2024. That is a massive jump.
Manhattan Councilmember and communist/globalist Gale Brewer said these vacancies:
[A]re creating havoc because there is homeless, garbage, and the business next door hurts.
What’s the cause of this trend?
During a New York City Council Committee on Small Business meeting on Wednesday, Calvin Brown, deputy commissioner for neighborhood development, stated:
[T]he problem was due to archaic zoning barriers.
New York Mayor Eric Adams has advocated for changing current zoning regulations. Adams’ initiative, the “City of Yes” aims to do just that.
According to the New York City Planning Department website:
City of Yes for Economic Opportunity would remove outdated limitations on businesses and ensure that local retail streets and commercial centers across the city can remain lively places that sustain our neighborhoods.
But ‘zoning restrictions’ is not the real problem that has created so many vacancies. And a jazzy new name on a BullSh*t program like “City of Yes” is dumb as dirt.
The New York Post reports:
– [S]hoplifting cost retailers in the state $4.4 billion in 2022,
– Thefts have gone up 64 percent between June 2019 and June 2023, and
– City retail thefts are up more than 6.5 percent as of April 2024 compared to April 2023.
New York City Councilmember for Queens and Republican Vickie Paladino put it frankly:
We’ve got kids coming in on bicycles and just ransacking a store.
We can’t sugarcoat the fact that there’s rampant crime in the city that is preventing people from opening small businesses in areas that used to be nice places to go to.
Bronx Councilmember Oswald Feliz, chair of the Committee on Small Business and a communist/globalist stated how close to home the issue was for him:
There’s a Walgreens one minute away from where I live that’s closing down due to retail theft.
Anytime I speak to a small business that is literally the very first issue they bring to us.
Paladino mentioned theft has gotten so bad that even mundane items are locked away.
I went in to buy a tube of toothpaste. It, of course, was locked up as everything is now.
But the store manager is keeping one tube of toothpaste behind the lock. It’s insanity.
The proposed antidote to vacancies is knuckleheaded thinking. Brewer is in favor of taxing landlords, and even suggesting owners of large retail buildings leave their properties vacant until chain stores move in.
These vacancies create problems with homelessness and garbage piling up, and according to Brewer the solution is a tax?
Noteworthy, whether vacancies are due to zoning regulations or rampant theft being on the rise, the radical liberal malfeasant leadership of the city has been allocating resources toward prosecuting President Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election. Meanwhile the city descends further and further into a state of squalor.
To wit:
As reported by CBS News, not only have rats in New York become ubiquitous in the worst way possible, but levels of rat-related sicknesses reached their highest annual rate last year.
The New York City Health Department has been warning the populace of the increasing cases of a disease spread by contact with rat urine.
According to the department, leptospirosis is caused by bacteria in infected animals’ urine. It usually causes flu-like symptoms (aches, chills, stomach trouble) but, if left untreated, can cause kidney failure, liver failure, or meningitis.
Without the government addressing homelessness, garbage, and crime, landlords will not be able to lease to chain stores or anyone else for that matter.
None of this had to happen, because:
– New York City did not have to go soft on crime and bail,
– New York City did not even have to tax its richest citizens into fleeing the city which in turn helped reduce the city’s coffers, and
– New York City voters [did not have to elect] a government that did [any of this].
Final thought: And now New Yorkers are suffering the fruits of their collective electoral labor.
As the old saying goes, ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’
