14 The Times Magazinehen she moved from Florida to
New York, aged 23, to work in
the city’s competitive, dynamic
magazine industry, Kim Kaupe
“definitely never considered
leaving again”. But, like many
Manhattanites, when the
coronavirus hit with ferocity
in March 2020 and the city
swiftly became the epicentre
of the outbreak, she and her fiancé fled, first
to rural upstate New York, then, a month later,
to Austin, Texas, to stay with his parents.
“We drove down in April thinking that we
would be there for ‘a few weeks’,” she recalls.
“Then a few weeks turned into a few months.
Then a few more.”
For the first three months, she says, “I was
kind of in denial. Then, around June or July,
I realised: this thing isn’t going away. Then,
a few months after that, I realised: and we’re
not going back to New York.” In October
2020, they flew back to the city and packed
up their Tribeca apartment.
“Living in Manhattan is not an easy life.
It’s hard,” she says. “But you live there for the
vibrancy – because you love the plays and the
restaurants and the buzz. And so when you
take that vibrancy away, when Broadway is
shut down and the restaurants are all closed,
you’re like: wait a minute, I live in a shoebox-
sized apartment, I don’t have a garden, and
I don’t have a dog because there is no garden.
And if the vibrancy is gone, then what am
I doing here?”
In the Lone Star State, by contrast, life
was continuing almost as normal. “For better
or worse, Covid didn’t really exist – at least
not to the governor of Texas. You had the
freedom to go outside and meet people for
coffee, and we started to make friends.” Also,
she says, “Winter started to hit, and it was 75F
and I was in a maxidress. That was delightful.”
Austin, having long been one of the coolest
cities in the US, with a thriving music and
nightlife scene, is now also one of the fastest-
growing, with major tech firms such as
Google, Tesla, Oracle and SpaceX opening
headquarters there. During the pandemic,
its reputation as a tech hub rocketed as
significant numbers of firms and their workers
relocated from Silicon Valley, which, along
with high taxes and a high cost of living, was
also suddenly subject to some of the strictest
lockdowns in the country.
Now 36, Kaupe runs her own marketing
agency, while her fiancé works in finance;
both quickly found Austin to be “a budding
ecosystem for entrepreneurs, and very
business-friendly”. Particularly compared
with New York. “For an average small-
business owner like me, New York is
extremely difficult. The taxes are superhigh
and it’s miserable,” says Kaupe.She’s exactly the sort of person David
Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, was
referring to recently when he warned that
high taxes in New York threaten its position
as a business and financial hub. “It’s not
guaranteed for any urban centre that you
have a permanent place in the world,” said
Solomon during the Financial Times’ Global
Banking Summit last November. “New York
has to be aware that there are good choices,
and it’s got to make sure it keeps itself super-
attractive. At the end of the day, incentives
matter, taxes matter, cost of living matters.”
While all Americans pay federal income
tax on the same scale, state and city taxes
vary dramatically. Texas, for example, levies
no personal income tax – compared with
a top rate of 10.9 per cent in New York state- and no corporate income tax – compared with
6.5 per cent in New York state, plus another
8.85 per cent in the city of New York (though
Texas does charge a corporate franchise tax).
“From a business standpoint, from a
personal standpoint, Austin just makes sense.
I don’t think it makes sense to go back to
New York,” says Kaupe.
Florida, like Texas, has no state income tax
either, and Miami has rapidly become the new
US hub for cryptocurrency investors and
entrepreneurs – the “crypto bros”. As Miami’s
mayor, Francis Suarez, noted recently, “There’s
a cost-of-living differential, which is about 2:
right now – it’s twice as expensive to live in
New York as it is to live in Miami.” Such is the
influx from the city that South Florida is now
being dubbed New York’s “sixth borough”.
New York’s incoming mayor, meanwhile,
retired police officer Eric Adams, who took
up the post on January 1, vowed late last year
that, “On January 2, I’m taking a flight to
Florida and I’m telling all those New Yorkers
that live in Florida, ‘Bring your butt back
to New York.’ ”
Adams had made the pandemic exodus
a central plank of his campaign, telling the
annual SALT conference, a gathering of
business heavyweights and money managers,
“New York will no longer be anti-business.”
While many major metropolises, including
London, emptied out in the pandemic, New
York’s exodus was dramatic. According to data
from the US Postal Service, 320,000 people
left the city in 2020, a 237 per cent increase
on the year before. Some returned, but not
all. And it’s estimated that up to another
100,000 left during 2021.W
Kim Kaupe, who left
New York for Austin,
Texas, a month after
the pandemic began‘LIFE IN NEW YORK IS HARD. YOU’RE HERE
FOR THE BUZZ. WHEN THAT’S GONE...’
PREVIOUS SPREAD: BYRON SMITH/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE, GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: COURTESY OF KIM KAUPE, COURTESY OF MEGAN ELIOT