Hat tip to 3b for the Fortune doom loop article:
The ‘prophet of urban doom’ says New York City is in major trouble, and it’s just the first inning of the ballgame: ‘The cycle is out of control’
As nicknames go, Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh has a doozy. The gray lady herself, The New York Times, dubbed him the “prophet of urban doom” last year for his forecasts resulting from his years of research on the economic impact or remote work on real estate and public finance.
Now, he tells Fortune, he sees an “event horizon” for a 1970s-style downward spiral known in the economics profession as a “doom loop.” And it’s just the first inning.
Everyone knows office buildings across the country have taken a beating from Covid and the rise of remote work. Perhaps only San Francisco is a better example than New York City, where the amount of offices collecting dust is at a record high: almost 20% are sitting empty, hemorrhaging money and shrinking the city’s tax base.
More economists than Van Nieuwerburgh say that the effects could reach far beyond just the real estate sector: Without drastic changes, he says, NYC could be headed for a self-perpetuating “doom loop” that will affect everything from housing values to public services budgets to the crime rate. The most famous example is the 1970s, when “white flight” and a fiscal crisis sent New York into a slump that it didn’t kick for over a decade.
It’s a simple equation, Van Nieuwerburgh said in an interview with Fortune, “Governments cutting spending means less money for transportation, less money for education, for sanitation, for all the things that make cities attractive.”
Van Nieuwerburgh, who joined Columbia in 2018, just a few years after winning an award for his research on shocks in the housing market affecting the macroeconomy, sees the “event horizon” for this doom loop coming soon. As federal grant money runs out and delayed tax effects kick in, he says New York is in the “first inning” of what could spiral into a legitimate urban crisis.
“Over the next three to five years, we’re really going to start seeing this. This cycle is out of control.”
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The crux of the “doom loop” theory is that it’s self-perpetuating. If vacancies rise and property values fall, cities can’t collect as much in tax revenue and overexposed banks have to cut back on lending. That means less public spending on things like transit, sanitation and public safety, and less investment in small businesses. A dirtier, more dangerous and less accessible downtown is less likely to attract companies and remote workers, meaning vacancies will rise even more and property values will fall further. Wealthy residents could throw in the towel and move their families (and tax dollars) to low-tax states like Texas or Florida. And thus, the cycle repeats itself.
“The money is now running out, or it has run out. This is the first year where we don’t see extra federal dollars anymore. That’s beginning to bite…[And] the vacancy rate is already at an all-time high,” said Van Nieuwerburgh. “That combination packs a pretty severe punch.”
