KAROL MARKOWICZ: How To Bring New York City’s Refugees and Middle Class Back Home.

Will people ever return to New York City? Should they?

Walk around Gotham right now, any random day, and you will find an empty, hurting city. Boarded up windows still dot the streets of ghost-town neighborhoods such as SoHo. Greenwich Village is a deserted wasteland of garbage and disarray. Graffiti is rampant. Emotionally disturbed people are prevalent. The homeless problem, which had been growing steadily for the past few years, has now exploded. Crime is up. Way up. Including and especially shootings.

Our politicians are completely absent. Mayor Bill de Blasio is musing on the Marxist canon. Gov. Andrew Cuomo spends his time celebrating himself on late-night television.

In May, The New York Times reported that 5 percent of New Yorkers, or about 420,000 people, had left Gotham. Many more have left in the months since. What does our city offer to induce those people to return?

What, indeed.