How Bad Is It Living In New York?

New York certainly has its problems, and I write frequently write about many of them. But is it really awful living here?

I believe in keeping these things in perspective. New York is actually a pretty great place to live, at least for now. The problem is that we have a class of idiotic politicians (and voters who put them in office) who pursue obviously destructive policies that make things much worse than they could be. However, rather than an imminent collapse, what we face is an ongoing slow relative decline compared to other parts of the country that follow more sensible policies. The problem is not really that things are so bad, but that they could be so much better with so little effort. It is a tremendous missed opportunity. I remain optimistic that things can be turned around, although that could take a long time.

A few days ago, on my post here about a new line of attack against New York’s rent regulation regime, commenter John Galt III set out a litany of reputed horrors about life in New York City. The comment began, “So living in NYC is bad,” and proceeded from there. Galt’s litany includes many items that are in the nature of impressions you could easily get from reading the press without seeking out context. So, with the intent of keeping things in perspective, I thought I would respond to some of Galt’s points. I’ll put them in categories.

Energy

Galt: “The Energy situation is terrible.”

Not really; or at least, not yet. What we actually have is a state climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, that sets forth a series of mandates, beginning with 2030, that are impossible to implement and that will cause huge cost increases if we try to implement them. With seven years down and four to go for implementing the 2030 mandates, almost no progress has been made toward the targets. Some kind of crunch is coming, and it is impossible to predict exactly how it will play out. The Governor is clearly searching for some kind of exit strategy, but she is a weak leader, unwilling to stake out any firm position in the realm of realism, and she is facing large ignorant and innumerate Democratic legislative majorities in both houses that are adamant about not letting her (or the citizenry) off the hook.

Meanwhile, the electricity continues to work, although at a meaningful premium price over national norms, and gasoline also remains available, in this case at a smaller premium above national averages. The premium energy costs thus far have more to do with unduly high taxes embedded in the price than with the effects to date of the climate mandates, which have mostly not been implemented. That situation differs greatly from what prevails in California, where a hostile regulatory environment for the oil producing and refining industry has driven gasoline prices to nearly double the national average, and where greatly increased reliance on solar panels for electricity has driven electricity costs much higher.

The CLCPA contains a provision allowing the state Public Service Commission to modify (extend) the deadlines for de-carbonizing the electricity system. A few days ago, the Chair of the Public Service Commission put up a post on Linked In announcing that there is a Petition before the Commission asking for hearings on extending the deadlines, and inviting public comments on same. I don’t claim to know how this will play out. One possibility is that the issue could end up splitting the Democratic caucus in the legislature, which could be a great thing.

Homelessness

Galt: “The homeless are everywhere.”

In this case, Galt’s assertion is not true at all. Maybe it’s because we are blessed with cold winters — particularly so this year. Not many people can remain outdoors to brave the temperatures we just had in January and February. We have a large homeless population, but the homeless are not pervasive on the streets. Instead, they are mostly housed in shelters, which is far different from being “everywhere.”

The City conducts an annual survey of “unsheltered” homeless on some night in February. The most recent survey turned up some 4,505 in that category, according to the New York Post, citing the State Comptroller’s Office. In a City of about 8.5 million people, that’s not a lot. For comparison, in Los Angeles County, population about 9.6 million, the 2025 Homeless Count found 47,450 unsheltered homeless — about 10 times as many as we have on a per capita basis. There are tent cities and homeless encampments spread all across LA, but very few such in New York.

To be fair, New York has a large homeless population housed in City shelters. The most recent report from the City’s Department of Homeless Services (for today!) reports a shelter census of 85,061. Add in the unsheltered population, and the total homeless population comes to just under 90,000. For Los Angeles (County) I find a total sheltered plus unsheltered homeless figure for October 2025 of approximately 72,000. Thus the two cities are roughly comparable in numbers of self-described “homeless” people per capita; but the population is much more “everywhere” in LA and other West Coast cities than in New York. Also, the “sheltered” homeless population in New York is very different from the “unsheltered” population in either of the two cities. According to that report from today, more than 55,000 out of the 85,000 “sheltered” homeless in New York are families with children.

Crime

Galt: “If you take the subway, watch out for the lunatic trying to push you on the tracks. . . . Muslims are out to kill you and the mayor could care less.”

Without doubt, there have been many recent and accurate reports about frightening crimes, and notably both instances of lunatics pushing people in the subway onto the tracks and also terror attacks by Muslims. These are terrible things.

But from the perspective of somebody living here, what is most important is the level or rate of serious crimes; and by any objective standard that is low. I often use the murder rate as the best proxy for the overall crime rate, since the number of murders is not much subject to questionable judgment calls or other manipulation of the data. The number of murders in New York City in 2025 was 305. In a population of about 8.5 million, that works out to a murder rate of about 3.6 per 100,000 — which is actually lower than the overall rate for the whole country of about 4 per 100,000. The national rate includes all the rural areas with little to no crime at all. The murder rate in New York City is dramatically lower than that in all the other big Democrat-run cities. As a few examples, in Chicago the murder rate for 2025 was about 15/100K; in Detroit, about 27/100K; in Baltimore, about 22/100K; and so forth. All of these represent substantial declines over prior years, but still New York is way, way safer.

Our new Mayor Mamdani promises a decreased level of policing that may cause the level crime to increase. I’ll be looking out for that, but it can’t happen overnight.

As to people getting pushed onto subway tracks or Muslims trying to kill you, there have been instances of that, but the numbers are so small that they barely show up in the overall statistics.

Taxes

Galt: “Taxes are insane.”

Taxes are definitely much higher than they need to be, or should be. But remarkably, not all taxes in New York City are “insane.” For example, although we have high income taxes and sales taxes, our real estate taxes are relatively reasonable.

The New York Post actually had an article yesterday about a street on the border of the Bronx (part of New York City) and Westchester County (an adjacent county that is not part of New York City). On one side of the street, the houses are in New York City, and on the other side of the street, they are in Westchester. Otherwise the houses are completely comparable. It turns out that the houses in Westchester pay about three times the real estate taxes. Excerpt:

The dynamic is so bizarre that one million-dollar home on the north side of Elm Tree Lane is in Westchester and pays nearly $28,000 in property taxes, while another million-dollar home on the south side is officially in the Bronx and pays just over $9,000, property records show.

To be fair, the real estate taxes in Westchester can fairly be called “insane.” In New York City, the real estate tax regime is way too complicated for me to educate you on it in this brief blog post; but overall, real estate taxes tend to be less than 1% of property value. Compare that to your own property taxes, and I’ll bet that ours are lower in most cases.

Housing

Galt: “Rent control and housing policy is terrible.”

Rent regulation is certainly terrible. However, the rent regulation regime only applies to about 1 million housing units out of close to 3.5 million. The large majority of the units, 2.5 million out of 3.5 million or over 70%, are outside of the regulation regime, either as unregulated rentals or as owner-occupied, with each of those categories having over 1 million units. Mamdani’s plans for a “rent freeze” only apply to the regulated units.

Yes, the price of the non-regulated units is undoubtedly driven higher than it should be by a combination of the collateral effects of the regulation regime, plus the suite of restrictions on development that make it difficult to increase the supply of housing.

The Mayor

Galt: “The mayor is a Jihadist Communist who hates Jews, Israel and Christians.”

True. So far, he has had little opportunity to put his destructive ideas into practice. We’ll find out soon how far he can take things. Much depends on the state legislature and governor.

Even in the worst case, my expectation is for a modest acceleration of the ongoing relative decline. With any luck we will survive this guy’s idiocy, as we survived eight years of de Blasio from 2013 to 2021.