In the early months of 2021, Lisa Willis’s daughter drove from Brooklyn to visit her in the Cleveland suburb where she lived. After a few days’ visit in the home Ms. Willis bought in 2015, her daughter, Libby, got back in the car to return to New York. This was the first time they’d seen each other since the start of the pandemic, and the goodbye was especially challenging.

Ms. Willis leaned into the car to hug her daughter one last time, then watched her pull out of the driveway. “She stuck her head out the window,” Ms. Willis remembered, “and said, ‘If you would just move to New York, we would never have to do this again.’”

For Ms. Willis, now 60, who had long entertained the idea of moving to the New York City area to be closer to her children, the statement was a turning point. At that point, she said, “You start to think, what do I have to do?”