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New York City is so highly diverse, and ever-changing, that it's hard to generalize. New York City violent crime numbers as a whole have been going down for many years, and most areas are regarded as very safe. I am not familiar with upper Riverside Drive, where you lived, though I used to live on Riverside Drive, in the lower 70's until 1975, which was lovely.
But we have had a very high rate of infection from the pandemic virus, as you know, almost 500 thousand cases we know of, and the city has been shut down and is just now beginning to open up. We have sacrificed many businesses, stores, tourism, offices, the arts, sports, etc in the interest of public health......we may be the one state where infection rates went down and stayed down since re-opening began but we have paid a price.......hopefully NYC will bounce back once the virus is controlled as it did after 9/11, where many families also fled the City as they have now.
In the general area you are asking about, several empty hotels have been turned into temporary housing for homeless men, some with untreated mental issues, drug addiction, other illnesses and problematic behavior. Reportedly there have been cases of people being accosted in the streets there by panhandlers, or worse, as these things happen where streets are empty of pedestrians, stores are boarded up, and police are few and mostly in cars....
Also, there will be many desperate out of work people, candidates for evictions, etc, which always increases crimes of various sorts. Our unemployment rate is now approximately 10%. That doesn't count those who are ineligible for unemployment insurance, such as small business owners, free lancers, etc.
We are hoping for the best....for government to make wise choices, for cool heads to prevail, for vaccines and better treatments for the virus to emerge. We will see.....
I hope you are well.....where are you? What part of the country?
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