“Everyone has many, many feelings,” says Rebecca Rosler, 42, founder of a Facebook group called “Into the unknown” which she conceived in the spring of 2020 for “those of us who have decided or are considering – willingly or unwittingly – to join the exodus from New York to greener pastures.”
The group, which has 13,500 members, is closed to journalists, so Ms Rosler summed up the mood. At one extreme are New Yorkers who have been pushed by the pandemic to prematurely pursue their dream of leaving the city and who have not been disappointed; at the other extreme are those who ran more impulsively and seek to return.
“Leaving broke their personality,” she said.
Jasmine Trabelsi, 42, belongs to a group of malcontents on Ms Rosler’s spectrum. In the fall of 2020, she and her husband, residents of Williamsburg in Brooklyn who both work in high-tech, closed a three-bedroom home in Woodstock, New York. Having already enrolled his 8-year-old daughter in a local school. school, they put themselves at the mercy of a salesperson who gave them two of the 15-minute viewing slots and accepted their mid-$600,000 offer.
Their sense of triumph did not last long. “We had a couple of friends in the area, but Covid is not the right time to move to a place where you don’t have a community,” Ms Trabelsi said.
Many of the nearby houses were owned by seasonal residents or by locals who rented them, so there was a sense of transience in the area. And their own precarious status as pandemic fugitives who can stay or go is discouraging easy attachments. A sense of unsettledness made Woodstock seem more like a vacation spot to Mrs. Trabelsi than a home.
In addition, they were on top of a mountain, and the businesses and services (when they were open) seemed remote.