BUFFALO, N.Y. — We have all heard stories about people moving during the COVID pandemic for various reasons, from job changes to family situations.
2 On Your Side's Kelly Dudzik explored why people chose to move to Western New York during the pandemic.
Meg Howe grew up in West Valley.
"Twenty-five kids in my graduating class, and when I turned 18, I was like, it's time to get out of here. So I went to the Pacific Northwest for college, and for 20 years, stayed away from Buffalo," Howe said.
Howe spent the majority of the last 15 years in Boston, and when March of 2020 rolled around, her family's 900-square-foot apartment wasn't cutting it anymore.
"Jason had been working from home before the pandemic, and then everything closed down, and our beautiful, tiny, 900-square-foot apartment got much smaller when he was on one side of the dining room table, and I was teaching kindergarten via Zoom on the other side of the table, and our almost 2-year-old, whose daycare closed down, was running around like a toddler does. So it was a little chaotic," Howe said.
They thought about buying a summer house where Howe's parents live to have more space during the pandemic.
"I can teach Zoom Kindergarten from anywhere. So we started looking at places in Colden, and we couldn't really find anything. And then my sister, who also lives in Boston, was like, look at this cool house I found in Parkside," Howe said.
At that point in the pandemic, a lot of people were thinking about moving.
"Just being close to family makes a big different in your quality of life, so I can see why people would want to move back," said Joelle Leclaire, a professor at SUNY Buffalo State.
Joelle Leclaire is a numbers expert. She is a professor of economics and finance at SUNY Buffalo State College. She broke it down for us like this.
"For the period actually from 2015 to 2019, we actually sit right in the middle of all the cities in the United States in terms of cost of living, so I was really surprised to see that, because I always felt like Buffalo was a very low cost of living, but that isn't actually true," Leclaire said.
But then Leclaire looked at housing costs for Buffalo and compared them to Indianapolis, the city with the lowest cost of living according to her research, and New York City, the city with the highest cost of living.
Leclaire says people tend to spend 30 percent of their budget on housing, and in Indianapolis, the average median value of a house with a mortgage is $137,000. In New York City, it's $606,000. In Buffalo, she says it's $90,000.
"Housing comprises about 30 percent of your total expenditures every month, so when you look at it that way, it totally makes sense to move to Buffalo, even though you might be paying a little bit more in terms of groceries. If you're paying a lot less in terms of housing, and maybe you're building equity at the same time, then you're really winning," Leclaire said.
Howe said: "The next day, Jason woke up, and was like, I think maybe we could buy that house and move to Buffalo. And that was May of 2020, and then it happened very quickly. In June of 2020, we were packing up a moving truck, and we had not seen our house until we moved in with the moving truck on the day we closed."
Howe decided to leave teaching and open Alice, Ever After Books, which she had been dreaming about for 20 years. It is in Buffalo, right across from the zoo, and she can walk to work.
"It's not just my place, it's our place. It's a place for the whole community to call their own. Like, I don't want it to be, that's Meg's bookstore, I want it to be, that's our bookstore," Howe said. "It's like a little family, and it's, I don't know, I feel sometimes torn like there's this tragic thing happening.
"And COVID is this world-changing thing, and yet at the same time my dream is coming true, and it's thriving at a time where so many things aren't. So, I don't know, I'm really happy I believed what Jason believed. Anything can happen in Buffalo."
Howe says a lot of people are coming in, saying they also just moved back or are thinking about it.
"I've lost count of how many people who are coming back, and they're scoping out Buffalo from different parts of the country, like, should we move back? And I'm like, 'Yes. Move back,' " Howe said. "We are a city built of small businesses and families. It's the City of Good Neighbors. It's so true."