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Comment by bgribble | Hacker News Reader

In my anecdotal experience, there is a sizable chunk of people who stayed within a couple of hours drive of the city but moved farther out to save money. Towns up the Hudson Valley, Westchester, "Greater Woodstock", Long Island, Conn/Mass/NJ.

If the only reason you are paying all that rent money for that tiny apartment is so you can take the subway to work, and you can work from Yonkers over Zoom just as well, why not?

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The general pattern in a lot of places I've read about is that most people don't move out to the boonies or across the country. They move someplace that's accessible to the city for a weekend or even a day trip.

I haven't moved because I already owned a place in an exurb, but if I had to go into Boston daily as I did for a while, that wouldn't be sustainable but I can go in for a show in the evening (or a customer visit). There are probably a lot of people for whom their housing calculus changes if they don't have to regularly go into a downtown office.

The food, the people, the theater, the music, the buildings, the parks, the museums, the rivers, the beach. The current that’s always pushing you out, which force you to grow or leave. Collectively, “the energy”.

If it’s only an expensive studio apartment that’s keeping one here, I agree, they should save the cash and make room for the rest of us.

But, for many people, a lot of "the energy" comes from a day or two per month.

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