It must be said: you and your husband did and does what everyone /should/ be doing, as opposed to what the vast majority for whatever reason is actually doing. The "Escape from New York" is becoming more and more common in western nations overall, I believe. The ones who like you knows smoke means fire gets out soon as, and now the moderately effluent middle-class has started to follow. When enough of them has left, one of two things may happen: a) The cities get leadership which tries to actually fix the problems using harsh zero-tolerance measures, which might as in maybe turn the flow. b) The cities get leadership which blames everyone who's left /and/ who's moved away for all the problems, asking for support from the federal level and lobbying at federal level for nationwide taxes to be diverted to "fix problems of income inequality and standards of living" between different states and counties" - which is a nationwide welfare-trap and nothing but. We have such a system. Well-run communes (what we call our counties) are forced to pay part of their taxes to poorly run communes, which can then squander said taxes on stuff like potty-mouthed trashcans, gender-neutral playgrounds or gays only nursing homes like my old hometown of Malmö. Malmö has gone from needing 2 000 000 000:-/yearly in communal welfrae in 2010, to 6 000 000 000:- last year (remove a zero to get a rough estimate in dollars). That's a city of some 330 000 inhabitants, all ages. You can expect New York's current mayor to start blaming surrounding outlying prosperous areas any day.