Finally Making It to Manhattan

Jeff Godfrey, who spent the last 11 years living in Brooklyn, realized a longtime dream this spring: He moved to Manhattan.

 

“I just always wanted to try living in Manhattan,” said Mr. Godfrey, a 34-year-old artist and bartender, who scoured various listings sites for months after realizing that, thanks to plummeting rents, the borough was finally within reach. In April, he pounced on a spacious, newly renovated two-bedroom on the Lower East Side that rents for $2,400 a month — the same price he was paying for an unrenovated two-bedroom off the Halsey J train stop in Bushwick. The new place is even rent stabilized.

 

Which is perfect, as he plans to stay for decades.

 

“There’s creative energy, human energy — not just artists but many different types of people. You see more people on the streets,” said Mr. Godfrey, who shares his apartment with a roommate, but hopes one day to have the space to himself. “All of New York has that, but Manhattan has this compressed energy.”

 

Which is a far different vision of Manhattan than the one that has been widely broadcast over the past year: hollowed out by the pandemic, a place of empty office towers and boarded-up storefronts, many of its residents having fled to the suburbs or Florida, never to return.