As Black New Yorkers Move Out, N.Y.C. Politics May Be Reshaped

For the better part of the 35 years that she lived in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, Dorinda Pannell made affordable housing her top — if not only — mission.

A lifelong Democrat, tenant leader with East Brooklyn Congregations and avid voter, Ms. Pannell, 75, known to her neighbors in the Linden Houses as “Miss P,” spent years organizing her fellow residents to push for better housing conditions. She even took her fight to City Hall to give a speech about it.

Now she is following New York’s mayoral primary closely, hopeful that the city’s next leader will do more for the millions of New Yorkers experiencing housing insecurity, particularly longtime Black and Latino residents who say that good-quality, affordable places to live are more and more elusive.

But she will not be voting in the primary or be able to see for herself how the next mayoral administration affects her community. For the last five years, Ms. Pannell has lived in Hampton, Va., where she can be closer to her son, obtain better health care and enjoy what she believes is a higher quality of life and lower cost of living.

“I’m still sad that I had to leave, you know?” she said, pointing to the organizing work she felt she had to put on hold. When it came time to move, she added, “I never cried so hard.”

Ms. Pannell is one of the hundreds of thousands of Black New Yorkers who over the last decade have made the excruciating choice to leave the city they’ve called home for generations.