New York Isn’t “Progressive”—It’s Regressive for Anyone Who Can’t Afford the Exit

By Michael Phillips | NYBayNews

New York loves to call itself progressive. It wears the label proudly, like a badge of moral authority—proof that it’s on the “right side of history.”

But for millions of New Yorkers trying to build a life here, that word has started to ring hollow.

Because whatever New York is becoming, it isn’t progressive for people who can’t afford to leave.

Walk through the city with open eyes and you’ll see the contradiction everywhere. Rent climbs faster than wages. Property taxes rise even as services decline. Middle-class families quietly disappear from neighborhoods they helped build. Retirees become “house-rich and cash-poor,” forced to sell not because they want to, but because they have no choice.

This isn’t accidental. It’s structural.

A City Built for Ideals, Not for Living

Progressive rhetoric dominates New York politics—but daily life feels increasingly regressive. The policies promise compassion, equity, and inclusion. The outcomes deliver pressure, precarity, and quiet exile.

Consider the basics:

• Housing: New York State faces an estimated 800,000-unit housing shortage, according to state and independent housing analyses. In New York City alone, vacancy rates hover near historic lows.
• Rent: As of 2024–2025, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in NYC exceeded $3,500, while average wages have not remotely kept pace.
• Cost burden: Roughly half of NYC renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, and about one-third spend over 50%, placing them in “severely cost-burdened” territory.

New York doesn’t push people out with eviction notices or moving trucks. It does something far subtler: it makes staying exhausting.

Every year brings new fees, new compliance rules, new mandates, new taxes—each defensible in isolation, each framed as necessary for the “greater good.” But together, they form an invisible wall that only some people can climb.

If you’re wealthy, insulated, or institutionally protected, New York still works. If you’re a working parent, a small business owner, a teacher, a nurse, a civil servant, or a retiree on a fixed income, the math becomes unforgiving.

Progressivism, in theory, is supposed to lift people up. In practice, New York’s version often feels like it manages people out.

The Exit Nobody Wants to Admit Exists

Here’s the part that rarely makes campaign speeches: New York is bleeding residents.

According to Census estimates, New York State lost hundreds of thousands of residents between 2020 and 2024, with domestic out-migration concentrated among working-age adults and families with children. The outflow wasn’t driven by retirees alone—it was families and earners doing the math.

Ask almost any New Yorker over 30 and they can name three people who “just left.” Florida. North Carolina. Texas. Pennsylvania. Sometimes New Jersey—sometimes anywhere but here.

Officials talk about population shifts as if they’re a mystery. They’re not. People aren’t fleeing diversity or culture. They’re fleeing unsustainable economics and a governing philosophy that treats their sacrifice as an acceptable cost.

The New Class Divide No One Talks About

New York’s real divide isn’t left versus right. It’s protected versus expendable.

There’s a growing class of people buffered from policy consequences—those with stable pensions, inherited property, regulatory carve-outs, or jobs tied to the system itself. And then there’s everyone else, expected to absorb rising costs indefinitely “for the cause.”

Small landlords face mounting compliance costs while institutional investors scale effortlessly. Small businesses close while large corporations navigate regulations with legal teams. Commuters pay more for transit systems that struggle with reliability. Homeowners see property taxes rise faster than inflation, even as services feel thinner.

When policies fail, accountability rarely flows upward. Instead, the burden shifts downward—onto renters, commuters, working families, and anyone without a lobbying arm.

That’s not progressive governance. That’s regressive impact wrapped in moral language.

Compassion That Stops at the Balance Sheet

New York talks endlessly about compassion, yet remains one of the hardest places in America to raise a family, start a business, or retire with dignity.

• Childcare costs in New York regularly exceed $20,000 per year per child, rivaling public college tuition.
• Transit fares and tolls continue to rise while reliability and safety concerns persist.
• Energy and utility costs remain among the highest in the nation, disproportionately hitting seniors and low-income households.

The result is a city that feels less like a community and more like a stress test.

People aren’t asking for perfection. They’re asking for a system that acknowledges limits—financial, emotional, and human.

A City at a Crossroads

New York still has everything going for it: talent, culture, innovation, energy. But slogans won’t save it. And neither will pretending that anyone who criticizes current policy must be acting in bad faith.

If the city wants to call itself progressive, it needs to confront an uncomfortable truth: a city that only works for those who can afford endless pressure is not advancing—it’s narrowing.

Real progress isn’t measured by how ambitious policies sound. It’s measured by whether ordinary people can stay, build, and belong without burning out.

Right now, too many New Yorkers are making the same calculation—and choosing the exit.

And if leaders keep dismissing that reality, the city won’t just lose residents.

It will lose the people who made it worth living in to begin with.