Log in Subscribe
Inside Out

An acquired taste

Jeanne Sager
Posted 4/5/22

At some point it began to feel like every single person who left New York City due to the pandemic came to Sullivan County.

A slight exaggeration, for sure, but there’s new research out of …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in
Inside Out

An acquired taste

Posted

At some point it began to feel like every single person who left New York City due to the pandemic came to Sullivan County.

A slight exaggeration, for sure, but there’s new research out of Cornell that shows we weren’t completely imagining things.

Researchers at the upstate college’s Program on Applied Demographics, part of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, took a look at Census data to track movements made during the early part of the pandemic.

Their conclusion? As more than 336,000 people left the state’s most populous city for parts beyond, Sullivan County saw the fastest population growth in the entire state at a rate of 1.5%.

That this news came out just a few days after the New York Times published a column announcing “living on a goat farm in Sullivan County got tedious” as the pandemic wore on wasn’t exactly coincidence.

We saw unprecedented population growth, but let’s face it: Aside from skyrocketing housing prices and and an even more untenable affordable housing problem, not a whole heck of a lot has changed in Sullivan County in the past two years.

We are still extremely rural, a place where services like Uber or Postmates are largely unheard of and even being able to run the app largely impossible in a quarter of the county.

We are still the sort of place that tourism articles call “quaint” and “cute” and make a point to mention shuts down as soon as the evening sets in.

This is rural living not just here but in many parts of the United States.

It’s far from perfect.

Sometimes it’s terribly tedious.

But it’s ours.

And we’re OK with being an acquired taste.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here