Long Island Real Estate – Housing affordability issues

The Mortgage-Pro · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 2248

Long Island real estate buyers are so worried that sky-high housing costs will force family members to move away that two-thirds support government action to build middle-class and starter housing, according to a new poll that shows widespread anxiety about the region's real estate problems.

But, in a conundrum for policy-makers, the poll also showed that a majority of Long Islanders believe building more moderately priced housing will likely lead to increased traffic, higher taxes, lower property values, and diminished school quality, while also bringing in "the wrong kind of people."

The poll results, and an accompanying statistical study of "quality of life" trends on Long Island, are being released today by the Rauch Foundation in its second annual Long Island Index report. The foundation-funded project cost $750,000.

Unlike its predecessor, this year's index report includes a poll of 805 Long Islanders, conducted last summer for the Garden City-based foundation by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research.

It paints a picture of an anxious and uncertain region where almost half of those polled say it's difficult for them to pay the monthly rent or mortgage.

"Affordable housing is a double-edged sword. We need to have it but you don't know who's going to move in," said Ted Cioffi, 70, of Hicksville, who was among those polled. "You can lose local control."

"I don't know what the answer is, but something needs to be done because down the road no one is going to be able to afford to live here," said another respondent, Joseph Miglino, 58, of Oyster Bay.

Miglino said he hopes to soon follow his brother to North Carolina because "it's like another world down there with property taxes and home prices."

"The taxes are killing me," agreed Justina Melendez of Brentwood, 30, a single mother with four children who drives a truck for United Parcel Service and who also was interviewed for the poll. "I'm planning to move as soon as I can. I want to go to Florida."

Forty-five percent of those polled said it's likely that they will move off Long Island within five years, and 70 percent said they were concerned that high housing costs will drive family members away.

Long Islanders are hardly alone in their worries. Similar percentages of people who live in the northern and western suburbs of New York City voiced the same concerns about possibly having to move away, according to the Stony Brook poll, which sampled residents of those other suburbs for comparison purposes.

But in several key categories, Long Islanders appeared to be especially anxious. For instance, 75 percent said the problem of young people moving away because of the high cost of living was "extremely" or "very" serious, while less than half of residents of the other New York City suburbs felt that way.

Similarly, 74 percent of Long Islanders said the lack of affordable housing was an "extremely" or "very" serious problem, while about 61 percent of other suburban residents felt the same way.

Affordable-housing advocates said the poll results are consistent with what they're seeing at community gatherings and town board meetings across Nassau and Suffolk: In a region dominated by single-family homes, residents seem increasingly willing to tolerate other types of housing.

"There's definitely a change in perspective, you can feel it," said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a nonprofit community planning organization founded in 1988. "When we started doing our first presentations about the new urbanism and smart growth and higher densities, we were laughed out of the room. People thought we were orbiting Pluto. Now, they get it."

But the poll also showed there is no consensus yet on how and where to provide cheaper housing.

Most Long Islanders still oppose raising height limits in downtown areas from two to four stories, and residents were closely divided on whether multifamily housing should be allowed in areas currently zoned for single-family homes.

Only three specific housing ideas were supported by at least 60 percent of those polled: building housing on vacant industrial, commercial and government sites; allowing more apartments in downtown areas; and requiring that at least 10 percent of homes in new developments be affordably priced.

Still, the report's authors said the poll results provide a road map for how public officials can win public support for affordable housing.

"Now you know what you have to overcome in order to build these coalitions, because if you do, there is strong support out there for affordable housing," said Carrie Meek Gallagher, the director of the Long Island Index project.

She said the Rauch Foundation, which supports youth, environmental and leadership-training programs, hopes the index report will be a "catalyst for regional change."

"Good information presented in a neutral way can move policy. That's what this is all about," she said.

The full report is available atwww.longislandindex.org.

The Rauch Foundation,