DAY TWENTY FIVE:Oct. 5
I awoke this morning to an alarm clock radio announcer saying these words: "hundred billion dollar shortfall." I slammed my hand on the snooze button, expected a respite, but heard a pack of emergency vehicles, sirens blaring, roar past.
Good morning!
New Yorkers are reeling from the latest forecasts of the economic impact we will suffer as a result of the World Trade Center catastrophe. $105 BILLION. That's right, one hundred five billion dollars. That's a tally that covers the estimated costs of physical excavation and reconstruction of the site, lost lives, lost jobs, lost companies, lost tax revenues, lost tourism. That does not include the actual rescue and emergency costs, which add up to $340 million for the hospitals, alone. Nor does it include costs and tax losses for the State, which the Govenor has signaled may be so great as to force bankruptcy without issuance of new State bonds. And the estimated toll may be way below eventual reality, the city comptroller warned, because it is assumed in his calculus that about 115,000 jobs will be lost in the city this year, but that does not factor for the overall national recessionary impact, which may well force more New Yorkers onto unemployment lines.
My colleague, Harry Berkowitz, put this in perspective: adjusted for inflation, the total Allied cost of the Persian Gulf War of 1991-92 was $70 billion.
The repercussions of September 11 keep rippling out into view, like a slow motion film of a stone dropping into a pool of water, emitting concentric wave after concentric wave of motion. We are only seeing the first couple of concentric rings right now, and the comptroller is trying to peek out a few rings into the future, but nobody feels confident that they can see all of the way out to calm, unrippled waters. Clearly the city will never again be what it was on September 10, but not even the telephone psychics are willing to predict what New York City will morph into five years from now.
And that is a key source of unease for residents of this city, as they cannot feel confident about their jobs, schools, real estate, taxes, stocks, savings or anything else that seemed predictable a month ago. After several years of being able to confidently predict one's home would be worth more tommorrow than today, stocks would (eventually) rise, jobs were readily available and the city would always be booming this sudden turnaround is deeply unsettling.
Of course the anxiety is highest for those who live downtown. It is hard to imagine that anybody would pay $2 million for a loft in TriBeCa right now, or for any time into the future few years, as the once hoity-toity area is now beseiged by police barricades, sirens and hassles. The barricades will be removed, presumably, but it is doubtful many of the stores and eateries TriBeCa residents counted on will survive the hiatus in uptown customers. Further, it will take at least five years to rebuild the Trade Center site, during which time a daily din of construction noise will form a soundtrack to life south of Canal Street.
My heart does not ache for the rich of TriBeCa, but the downtown area is also full of artists, writers, immigrants and young people who are far from rich. Many of them will be forced, by financial circumstances, to stay.
Rippling outward from that area, which until 1820 was basically New York City's entirety, it is easy to see the impact spread up into the Bronx, across the river to Brooklyn and Queens, perhaps even to Staten Island. As people lose their jobs, they may be forced in an elevated unemployment environment, to leave the city. Those houses and apartments will come on the market, possibly causing localized housing gluts that drive down real estate prices and turn recently-gentrified neighborhoods back to their former selves.
Economists warn that the real impacts will not be felt in this city until well into 2002. If the Federal government doesn't bail out New York on a grand scale the City and State will be forced to stop hundreds of programs that were indented to improve life in this town, such as school construction, parks improvements, waterfront developments, hospital renovations, road repair, completion of the 2nd Ave subway line and completion of the JFK subway connection. It is a long list that boils down to infrastucture: that magic word that determines whether or not companies want to locate their headquarters, along with all their jobs and tax inputs, into your fair city.
The often cited cliche about the Chinese character for disaster does apply, however. Supposedly that character also means opportunity. Throughout her history New York has come through disaster to be a better place. Real estate greed, self indulgence, vanity and smugness were the all-too-apparent themes of Gotham in the '90s. Perhaps they will be replaced by some heart and soul.
On Tuesday New York Democrats will go the polls for the third time in four weeks, choosing their candidates to run against the Republicans in November. Sadly, there is little to inspire when one glances through the roster. One can only hope that just as Rudolph Giuliani managed during the first two post-catastrophe weeks to reveal a part of himself few New Yorkers imagined was there, whichever man is elected his successor will prove a much nobler and brighter individual than any of them now appear.
Be well. Be safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
