cultural legacy, and the steady
stream of arrivals who’d come to
New York to transform themselves
into who they were destined to be.
This past winter, as I faced the
prospect of returning to New York
after a decade in California’s Bay
Area, I knew I wanted Harlem to
be my home again. If I was hoping
for a return to the charming literary
fantasy that sustained me as a col-
lege boy, though, I was out of luck.
As I began my search for housing, a
broker described the rental market
as the worst he had witnessed in his
long career. The pandemic — or at
least, the city’s patience with fi ghting
it — was coming to an end. My hous-
ing search pitched me headlong into
a frenzied and undignifi ed reality.
Competitors greeted me at every
open house I went to. Like me, they
had trawled StreetEasy and Trulia
and Craigslist; like me, they had
been tempted by digitally placed
furniture and airbrushed interiors,
fooled by wide-angle photos of
spacious living rooms that turned
out to feel like crypts. Some eager
people arrived clutching application
packets, while others bid up the rent.
One Saturday afternoon in March, I
walked to see a fi fth-fl oor walk-up,
which a broker described as a ‘‘siz-
able one bedroom.’’ It left me defl at-
ed: The wood fl oors subtly sloped
toward the apartment’s center, and
the bedroom could snugly fi t a full-
size bed, maybe a small dresser, but
nothing else. The bathroom was a
closet; I could barely stand in the
sole actual closet. When I asked if
the dingy walls would be repainted
before the unit was rented, the bro-
ker, a gangly zoomer in a fur coat,
blinked at me. ‘‘No, that’s not some-
thing the landlord will do,’’ he said,
before pointing out a neighborhood
bar that, he promised, served bot-
tomless mimosas at brunch.
Eventually I found a place, just
steps away from Harlem’s heart
at 125th Street. When I look down
from my living room onto the street
below, the neighborhood’s new,
motley character comes into view:
people alternately sprawling and
contracting as neighbors shuttle inpopulation; the pandemic only
exacerbated this gap. Throughout
its modern history, Manhattan has
been defi ned by masses of refugees,
laborers, dreamers, millionaires,
paupers, writers, actors, musicians
and all the rest arriving and charging
onto, up the length of and eventually
off the island. It’s dawning on me that
I’m now part of yet another kind of
New York history: a wave of migra-
tion that would decide the city’s
future. New York is poised to revive
itself after the suff ering of 2020, but
as with the pandemic itself, some
will be able to weather recovery’s
onset better than others. As new
migrations begin to change the
city’s population and culture, New
Yorkers will be answering the same
questions they’ve asked themselves
for decades, or even centuries: What
do we want this city to be, and whom
do we want here?Arriving in New York might prompt
dreams of literary stardom, indul-
gent luxury or maybe just a good
bottomless-mimosa brunch. Butand out of buildings; the quick steps
of new-moneyed young profession-
als in contrast with the block’s other-
wise-sleepy tempo. From this perch
at the base of St. Nicholas Terrace, I
can see how the neighborhood, and
the city itself, have changed since I
last lived in New York in 2011.
The changes are being driven, yet
again, by arrivals, as an infl ux of new
and returning residents jam them-
selves into the city. New Yorkers
with means who fl ed during Covid
are now returning to the upscale
neighborhoods they abandoned; at
the same time, the pandemic-era
rent concessions and eviction pro-
tections that advantaged many
renters — especially in the poorest
neighborhoods, where most resi-
dents stayed put — have expired.
Then there are the newcomers like
me, moving to the city in droves for
work, repopulating the offi ces that
are struggling to creep back to life.
To make matters worse, over the
last decade, the city has failed to
construct new aff ordable housing
commensurate with its growingGrand Central Terminal’s main concourse, 1930s or ’40s.Left to right: Hulton Archive/ Getty Images; Lambert/Getty Images; George Rinhart/Getty Images↑ P. 15