That's easy to say, but packing up and moving simply isn't a viable option for many, many people. They're not staying because leaving is "emotionally difficult". They're staying because leaving is financially impossible.
If a homeowner's neighborhood is dying, then their home value is practically zero. And even if their house had some market value, the potential number of buyers is so small that the home could sit on the market for years, all the while incurring maintenance costs.
And as the neighborhood dies, the pool of available work shrinks. Wages shrink and job opportunities dry up. Economic diversity plummets, leaving the region more exposed to sudden shocks. Towns become increasingly reliant on parasitic industries -- payday loans, gambling, furniture leasing, etc -- that further depress wealth and prey disproportionately on the structurally impoverished.
Even a relatively well-off resident of a dying suburb -- someone with savings, a paid-off house, and no attachments to the area --
would be hard-pressed to finance a move to a healthier locale.
And most residents of these areas -- for obvious reasons -- don't fit this profile. Most don't leave because they can't afford to leave. They don't have savings. They live paycheck to paycheck. They're underwater on their house. They're on a tiny fixed income and can't afford the cost of living elsewhere. They're a public employee two years away from a pension and, if they move now, they forfeit a liveable retirement. They're the sole caregiver for disabled family members. Their skills aren't valuable in another market.
Et cetera.
Too often, we assume that poor people make poor choices, without considering that they might actually be making the best of the shitty slate of options available to them.
I think most reasonable people are in agreement that the suburbs -- especially industrial suburbs -- were and are an unsustainable model for development. They will need to be abandoned. But the process of that abandonment matters.
If we go about it the wrong way, as we are in the Rust Belt, then we condemn the people stuck in those areas to a lifetime of poverty. And those people don't just go away when we turn out backs on them. Their problems will become our problems. So, for economic and humanitarian reasons, we need to find a responsible way to decommission post-industrial towns and relocate their residents.