One of the most pressing issues New York faces is the continued population loss thanks to outmigration. Between July 2021 and July 2022, New York saw its largest population loss of 299,557 people. They didn’t die from COVID-19 or old age, they moved to other states after determining that New York no longer looked after their needs. This is a concerning reality because it impacts the rest of us here even more. In 2010, New York lost two districts thanks to a population decline. In 2020, following an updated census, New York lost a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which in turn lost us a player to advocate for us at the federal level. This is a serious conversation that is not being taken seriously by all members of state government.

An argument used by Gov. Cuomo was that people were leaving because of bad weather. Because of long winters. It’s true that Florida has seen a surge in population growth thanks in part to relocation efforts by New Yorkers, but people don’t move to Florida for weather alone. They move there for the economic opportunity. They move there for financial stability. They move there for a government that doesn’t overspend and still fail to meet the needs of its people. And for the past decade, Majority lawmakers have handed states like Florida and Texas that population boom because of their backwards economic strategies, which in turn have supplied them with a willing and able workforce that have seen economies flourish.

Gov. Hochul is trying to amend that in her own way. Her focus on her housing compact proposal argues that with more competent housing and further business incentives, the people will come back. And this idea is fraught with problems, not the least of which is the economic burden it proposes to those that are still here. The restrictions it will put in place, like bans on natural gas heating and cooking devices, are just one example. It will impact homeowners as well as business owners, and the change in the environment such a restriction may present will likely be so miniscule that it makes little difference on the world scale.

This journey to refilling New York properly will take time, and I’m sure plenty of arguments are down the road. But one way or another, my colleagues across the aisle must recognize that if they keep making New York unaffordable, people will keep leaving.