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NYC budget watchdog urges spending cuts, not tax hikes, to stem population losses
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Arun Venugopal
Published Apr 21, 2026
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By
Arun Venugopal
Published Apr 21, 2026
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Affordability, underperforming schools and a lack of confidence in city services are prompting residents to flee the five boroughs, according to the authors of a new report.
New York City has lost tens of thousands of residents to states including California, Texas and Florida in recent years, a demographic trend compounded by a drop in the number of immigrants arriving in the city in 2025, said the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit public policy group that advocates for fiscal constraint.
Andrew Rein, president of the CBC, told Gothamist the findings revealed frustrations with city life across many racial groups and incomes. As it has in the past, the group urged lawmakers to cut spending rather than increase taxes to retain residents.
“What we see is more people leaving than coming,” Rein said of the report, which pegged the city's population at 8.6 million, down marginally from one year earlier. “We see it being wealthy people, middle-class people and poorer people, evenly distributed.”
The report comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been pushing for more taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents. Last week, his push for a pied-a-terre tax on wealthy residents’ second or additional homes drew support from Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said the measure could raise as much as $500 million a yea rin additional taxes.
The Mamdani administration is also pushing an affordability agenda including universal child care and a rent freeze on rent-stabilized units, as well as free city buses and cheaper groceries.
Rein said the findings should compel policymakers to tighten spending and improve public services to keep the city attractive to residents. As the state with the highest per-capita tax rates, New York can ill afford to levy even higher taxes, he said.
“We know that we're spending a lot of money,” Rein said. “The question is, are we getting the value?”
Ana Champeny, the group's vice president for research, said the numbers serve as a red flag about the public’s faith in government.
“Government services are not well rated,” she said. “We see students and families voting with their feet, both leaving the city and leaving the city's public schools.”
The state collects more taxes per capita than any other state: $12,495, far outpacing runner-up North Dakota, at $9,784, and well below the national average of $7,009, Rein said.
New York’s status at the top should help inform the public discourse about departing residents, he said, and drive home the point that people are not merely concerned by affordability but the quality of life and services.
“People across the board are dissatisfied and deserve more services, certainly for their top dollar that they're spending to live here," Rein said.
The primary destination for people leaving the city between 2019 and 2023 was New York City's suburbs, with Nassau and Westchester counties leading the pack.
But significant numbers of New Yorkers moved to southern California, Austin, Houston, Atlanta and southern Florida, the authors found, suggesting southern flight carries an economic loss for the city.
Nearly 69,000 New Yorkers left the city for three counties in South Florida: Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward. At the same time, just 25,881 residents of those counties made the move to New York City.
Along with Los Angeles and Austin, Rein said Palm Beach drew some of the wealthiest people fleeing New York City. According to the report, the net decrease of nearly 14,000 people who left the city for Palm Beach “resulted in a reduction of $3.3 [billion] in New York City's adjusted gross income.”
The city has experienced a net loss of native-born residents for much of the last half-century, according to the Empire Center think tank, but that longstanding exodus has been largely countered by a healthy inflow of immigrants.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that cycle, as the number of foreign-born people moving to the city slowed to their lowest levels in years in 2020 and 2021 — before rising to 155,000 in 2023 and 220,000 in 2024.
Last year, the figure dropped yet again, to 66,000, a decline Rein attributed to federal immigration policies. It caused the city's overall population to marginally decline.
The report provides a breakdown of who left the five boroughs in recent years.
Hispanic New Yorkers are the group most likely to have fled between 2022 and 2024. In terms of income, while the wealthiest New Yorkers were most likely to leave in the first two years of the pandemic, the departees are now evenly spread out across income brackets.
The authors pointed to declining public school numbers as well. The public school system had 800,000 enrolled students in 2024-25, compared to 958,000 10 years earlier. By contrast, 147,000 students attended charter schools, up from 84,000 a decade earlier. During that same period, private school enrollment declined somewhat.
The figures were starkest in parts of Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx, as well as Central Brooklyn. Traditional public school enrollment dropped 36% in Bed-Stuy and 35% in Canarsie/East Flatbush, the report found. Enrollment dropped by similar rates in Central Harlem/Morningside, Mott Haven, Morris Heights and East Tremont.
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
economy
income
new york city
population
Arun Venugopal
Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter for the WNYC and Gothamist Race & Justice Unit who focuses on issues of race and bias in our region. His reporting also tackles the topics of immigration, faith, and inequality. Arun serves as the regular fill-in host of the station's "U.S. of Anxiety" program. Arun was the creator and host of Micropolis, a series about race and identity. He is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, On the Media and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Salon. He also frequently serves as an emcee and moderator of panel discussions on race, religion, and identity issues and has been a guest host of NPR's "Fresh Air." He lives with his family in Queens.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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