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When housing prices were running up, present homeowners started counting their chickens and planning their retirement. But what is forgotten once the bloom is off the rose as it is now, that these high housing costs also have their costs.

When looking around Long Island as a young man in my early 20’s the though of moving out was enticing, but the reality was grim. The dearth of rental properties meant that an illegal basement apartment was my only choice besides staying with Mom and Dad. This situation was replicated for many of my peers and the result was a mass exodus across the country and a generation lost.

Now after the present run up in housing costs, their is a new generation that could be lost from the New York suburbs. With the terrific education that is offered and the expectations of success, the cost of living in the tri-state area is burdensome compared to lesser cost cities where the paychecks are fairly comparable.

Long Island’s Newsday ran an editorial on the failure to have reasonable housing available for the next generation of Long Island’s youth.

Towns and villages that have not yet done their fair share of next-generation housing have to get off their duffs. The major institutions pushing for change, such as the Long Island Association, Suffolk County government, and the Long Island Regional Planning Board, must harmonize their strategies and avoid working at cross-purposes.

The people who need this housing most, young workers, have to become more informed and more active in pushing for solutions. They should emulate the spirit of the young families of 60 years ago, who showed up in droves at 1947 hearings leading to a change in a Hempstead town ordinance. That made possible the postwar generation’s affordable housing triumph: Levittown.

We have to get past the deeply held fear that more dense patterns of development will urbanize all of Long Island. That fear is rooted too often in racism and fertilized too eagerly by politicians. But increased density, especially in our downtowns, is the economic incentive we need to get developers to build affordable homes and rental units. via Newsday

The same issue was raised in New Jersey in an editorial. The youth of the communities are leaving in droves.

The most common reasons cited for the mass exodus are our state’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes and the crisis of affordable housing — two issues Gov. Corzine and our state legislative leaders promised to tackle in 2007. They promised to address taxes through property tax reform and an overhaul of our unfair school funding system. They promised to address the housing crisis by creating more affordable units and reforming our fair housing rules, including confronting the shameful practice of regional contribution agreements (RCAs), the loophole that allows wealthy towns to pay poor communities to take more than their fair share of affordable housing. via APP.COM

This issue is close to my heart. I still remember the conversations close friends and I had about how the choices seemed to be on Long Island in the mid eighties that you could buy a house or have a child with the newly wed couples. Now these same friends live all across the country, very few staying on Long Island. My fear is that another generation will be in the same predicament.

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