Why are so many Americans suddenly relocating, buying guns and storing up huge quantities of food?
In 2020, we have been watching hundreds of thousands of Americans relocate, gun sales have shattered all previous levels, and people are purchasing and storing huge stockpiles of food. We have seen the American people get deeply concerned about the future before, but we have never seen anything quite like this. It is definitely a major life decision to pack up everything you own and move to another part of the country, but that is precisely what countless Americans have been doing in recent months. WABC wanted to know precisely how many people have been doing this in New York City, and the information that they were able to get from the United States Postal Service really surprised them…
7 On Your Side Investigates requested from the United States Postal Service how many families requested a change of address and moved to zip codes outside of New York City, and the numbers are big.
In fact, those numbers show that over 246,000 New Yorkers “have filed a change of address request” just since the month of March…
Overall since March, more than 246,000 people have filed a change of address request. That’s an almost 100% increase compared to the same time period in 2019.
Of course people have been moving away from other major cities in very large numbers as well, and this has created a tremendous glut of empty apartments that need to be filled.
Because there is now so much supply and so little demand, apartment rental prices have been plummeting, and this has especially been the case in the San Francisco area…
San Francisco saw the prices fall the furthest in September, according to data from Realtor.com, with costs for a one-bedroom unit falling by 24.2%.
Two other cities in California – San Mateo and Santa Clara – experienced the second and third largest drop in average one-bedroom rent prices, followed by Suffolk, Mass., and Manhattan.