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NYC's transplants aren't coming from where you think they are

By Virginia K. Smith  | June 8, 2016 - 3:59PM

New York seems to have a love/hate relationship with its transplants, relying on them for a steady stream of fresh energy and optimism, all the while decrying them as the source our rampant overcrowding and rising rents. But where are all these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed newbies actually coming from?

In spite of frequent grumblings exhorting gentrifiers to "go back to Ohio," in reality, it would seem that most of New York's new residents come from other major cities nearby. That, and Los Angeles. Take a look below at numbers that SpareFoot, a moving site, has collected based on recent census data:

Our top sources of new arrivals are nearby parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia (aka "the sixth borough," purportedly), and L.A., which is constantly swapping creatives with us. This also more or less lines up with recent data showing that New Jersey, California, and Florida were the most common hometowns of newcomers to the city.

SpareFoot also looked at where transplants within New York state itself are coming from, and unsurprisingly given the proximity, nearby Nassau and Westchester counties had the highest numbers.

It's not as romantic as the notion of a starry-eyed kid from a small town in the Midwest hopping off the bus at Port Authority with a suitcase and a dream, sure. But logistically, it does make sense that, for the most part, New York draws residents from other large east coast cities or nearby suburbs.

"We weren't surprised by the amount of in-state movers," SpareFoot's Matt Schexnayder tells us via email. "In fact, I know people from Upstate New York who say that 90 percent of the people they grew up with move to the city."

 

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