The congestion charge will be between $9 and $23. For certain parts of Manhattan. During certain hours. It sounds like your problem is where you live, fundamentally, not the charge.
> a thousand dollars at that point between hotel and transportation
You do see how, from a resident's perspective, you spending more money less frequently is not a downside?
> what's actually been gained relative to me taking my own car in and parking in a garage
A reduction in space wasted to parking. Also, congestion: your car adds a car to the road. (You're also a non-professional driver in a dense urban environment.)
The things that people want to deal with the PITA of living in Manhattan over depend on volume of people. COVID and WTF killed commercial office traffic - now that it's getting dark early take a walk up 3rd Avenue in the late afternoon - the offices are empty.
So the residents don't want to deal with commuters, don't want to deal with drivers, etc. Cool. I don't want to hear about bailing people out of their $2M mortgages on 800 ft^2 apartments when the cultural, dining and entertainment that brought them to Manhattan migrates to Brooklyn and Jersey.
Real estate crashing would save NYC from itself.
(And I'm not sure from a driving in perspective what's actually been gained relative to me taking my own car in and parking in a garage which is what I usually do.)