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I've been all over the country and I have lived, albeit brief periods, in Oregon and Florida. Everyplace is both good and bad. Someplaces are a good fit others are not depending on the individual. The best place for any individual is the place they like living the most in.
As far as North Carolina is concerned I've spent time in Raleigh. The traffic there to a Long Islander is like nothing. I mean compare Raleigh to being stuck on the LIE in rush hour and for more fun try being stuck on the LIE in the middle of a ice/snow storm. As far as explosive growth - maybe to folks down there it seems crowded, but to a Long Islander the place seems underpopulated. The whole metro Raleigh-Cary-Durham area might have a million people. Long Island's Nassau-Suffolk has about 2.8 million add in Brooklyn and Queens and there are almost 8 million of us on this 120 mile long and 15 mile wide sand bar. So to us North Carolina has wide open spaces.
Finally home prices are less than half what they are here. In Raleigh, the Charlotte area, etc...a brand new home, and we are talking 4 bedrooms - 2.5 baths - 2 car garage - cac, can be bought for under $250,000. A similar home on Long Island would be a minimum of $500,000 to $800,000. So to Long Islanders it is a huge bargain.
I'm not saying that people should abandon Long Island for North Carolina, but I understand the desire of many Long Islanders to seek out a new start in other places. It makes economic sense. It is always hard to leave your home and adjust to someplace else. Long Islanders are like domestic immigrants. We are leaving our homeland for new places that are very different, but I say good luck to all those who make the move.
Finally, took the words out of my mouth. No one should be abandoning LI to greener pastures, unless it make economic and emotional sense to do so. I also say good luck to those who stay and good luck to those who move. Moving off LI might not be the best for your situation. Everyone is different. In our situation we would have been crazy to stay.
[quote=slynn41072;2846515]Why are you even posting on the LI board?
I think the same could be asked of a NC resident trolling the LI board
Don't sit at your computer, go outside and enjoy the wonderful weather we are forced to hear about from everyone that left LI to go to NC.
How about everyone that wants to or is in the process of moving to NC, go to THAT board to tell everyone how happy they are. We are a LI board, we don't care about NC anymore than we would about Topeka ,Kansas. If we want info on NC, we know where to get the info, thanks
Most elementary school children are still on traditional calendars. Claiming there are "huge reassignments" is misleading; it typically is less than ten percent and based on the current rules once it happens one time it can't happen again. Also I don't believe I've ever heard of a situation where two (or more) siblings are in the same grade grouping (K-5, 6-8 or 9-12) and are in different schools unless one is in a magnet or charter school and even then it would be by choice. School assignments are done by node (address) not individual student. As for the busing claim that may hold up but fortunately not for anyone I know, my family included.
Traffic down here may be heavy compared to Rochester but it's nothing compared to most major cities including New York. House prices are still a huge bargain compared to Long Island even if they have increased since your entry into the region fourteen years ago.
Wake County isn't Long Island on many key points and neither of those is Rochester as well. I could see why Wake County wore you down considering your primary comparison is Rochester. At least there you won't be dealing with explosive growth or spiraling house prices which should provide you with some relief.
10% of the student population being reassigned to a new school every year is a very significant number. That's one out of every ten students changing schools....and that's just for that one year! Its not the same exact kids getting reassigned every successive year. Most children in Wake County have been reassigned at least once. If you have never heard of 2 or more children in the same family in the same school range age group...I guess I'll be your first. Last year my son was assigned to Apex High school and my daughter to Panther Creek High school (where there were kids who lived in Apex, as well as kids from the Leesville Road area of N. Raleigh). My son was a senior and my daughter a freshman. This was the case for many families in the western half of Apex last year. It is actually more common in elementary schools and I have to say I'm surprised you've never heard about it (unless you are a fairly new transplant to the area). My main point in that post was to say to the person who I had quoted that saying "whatever we Long Islanders come to NC and demand change for will be for the better" was way off base and an idea that he/she should defintiely not convey to locals if they ever do move down there.
Hmm. Lets start with a little background on me. I was born in Upstate NY (Rochester) were our tax burden is acutally much higher than you LI'ers complain about ( yeah, our houses are cheaper, but our jobs pay less too). I moved to Raleigh NC in dec 1994 to try something new and because it was hailed as being one of the best places to relocate too. I originally lived in North Raleigh, but between Dec. 1994 and August 2007 I also lived in Cary, South Raleigh, and finally Apex. This past August my family and I moved back to Upstate NY partly because we missed our family and hometown, and also because we'd HAD IT with what Wake County had become. The area was listed in Forbes and Money magazines as the best place to live, best buy, blah blah blah, and everyone from Long Island, NJ, as well as California and now Florida (where everyone from LI was moving 20 years ago, before they made it all expensive too) came in droves. And after that everyone who was there started telling all of their friends how amazing and cheap it was. GUESS WHAT HAPPENED?... The schools are so overcrowded that almost all elementary kids are on year round schedule (which admitedly some people do prefer) AND there are HUGE student reassignments EVERY YEAR. Some kids get bussed to new schools 20 or 30 minutes away. Some families have 2 or more kids in 2 or more different schools! Traffic is ridiculous. Even if they could afford to build all the roads they need (which they can't, because remember, the taxes are so amazing and low and that makes everything better)....they can't build them fast enough just like the schools. House prices are also not nearly the bargain they used to be. So in conclusion; NO...more and more Long Islanders and people from other expensive areas coming to NC (or any other place for that matter) will NOT help it. If they were so great and could get things done so well...why did everything get so expensive and "unliveable" on LI in the first place?
Just a bit of advice. If you do ever move to the land of milk and honey that is NC...I'd STRONGLY suggest you not come with that attitude of "the changes we are arguing for will make it better"...because as rude and ranting as I may have just sounded in the above post; you'd be begging for the native NC'ers to address you as politely as I did!
Long Island is and will always be more expensive because #1 it is an island. North Carolina's cities are not landlocked and can keep spreading out. Look at Atlanta. The metro area is more than twice the size of Charlotte's and it is still cheap and gaining about 200,000 people a year. It seems to be doing fine. #2 LI is close to NYC, which will always be expensive. You are exaggerating all the "growth issues" way too much. I am sorry you had such a bad experience in NC but get over it already. Your like the grim reaper - you can keep on predicting doomsday but it isn't going to happen.
And by the way, I used to live on LI and I think it is overrated. Everyone thinks it is the center of the universe and everywhere else (except "wonderful" Florida and California) is Hicktown USA. The only good thing about LI is being close to the city. The beach is nice but you can only use it 2, maybe 3 months out of the year. June can still be cold and the water doesn't warm up until July/August. Plus, I feel like I wouldn't be able to get anywhere there. It would be so hard to afford someplace nice after college and I know a lot of people who live in their parents basements because they can't afford to get their own place. No thanks - it isn't worth it.
B/c those who moved from LI have to reaffirm their reasons for leaving to themselves and want to get others on their bandwagon. Most of them felt forced to leave due to finances, so they have to reassure themselves repeatedly that they did the right thing.
I left Queens,Bklyn,Manhattan. I don't dare step on those boards. I could care LESS what goes on there. I left and never look back. I don't go to the NY board and tell them to move to LI, that it is so much better, which I do believe but also know that would be MO anyway. I am intelligent enough to know if they wanted to learn about LI, they would come here. Just as if we want to learn about NC, we would go to that board.
Because we humans are as pack oriented and defined as dogs and when some humans yearn to leave a place they want all their pack members to agree and follow if possible for it confirms their decision. It's very difficult to decide to leave a place of comfort be it good or bad and many need the approval of their choice hence the repetitive threads ......
To be honest I will be moving outside LI soon too. But its not a money issue as many people assume. Im leaving for warmer weather! But I wont be back to talk sh*t about LI.
To be honest I will be moving outside LI soon too. But its not a money issue as many people assume. Im leaving for warmer weather! But I wont be back to talk sh*t about LI.
That's probably why you don't feel the resentment that motivates the bad talk (b/c you aren't being forced to leave due to cost). Good luck to you and thanks for that promise of not coming back to talk bad about us.
Long Island is and will always be more expensive because #1 it is an island. North Carolina's cities are not landlocked and can keep spreading out. Look at Atlanta. The metro area is more than twice the size of Charlotte's and it is still cheap and gaining about 200,000 people a year. It seems to be doing fine. #2 LI is close to NYC, which will always be expensive. You are exaggerating all the "growth issues" way too much. I am sorry you had such a bad experience in NC but get over it already. Your like the grim reaper - you can keep on predicting doomsday but it isn't going to happen.
And by the way, I used to live on LI and I think it is overrated. Everyone thinks it is the center of the universe and everywhere else (except "wonderful" Florida and California) is Hicktown USA. The only good thing about LI is being close to the city. The beach is nice but you can only use it 2, maybe 3 months out of the year. June can still be cold and the water doesn't warm up until July/August. Plus, I feel like I wouldn't be able to get anywhere there. It would be so hard to afford someplace nice after college and I know a lot of people who live in their parents basements because they can't afford to get their own place. No thanks - it isn't worth it.
harsh. Anyways, I never said I thought Long Island was great. I wouldn't want to live there myself. My basic point is that with so many people coming to NC from LI...it will (sorry if you don't believe it, but I guess everyone is allowed a little denial) eventually have many of the same problems as LI has. Your comparison to Atlanta is laughable at best and I quesiton whether you have ever been there and can clearly see now that you don't think of mass suburban sprawl as a bad concern at all. Try finding a house in Atlanta or any of its inner ring suburbs (with less than 45-60 minute commute) at a similar price range to those you could find in an equal distance from Raleigh. The Atlanta metro is HUGE, not just in populaiton, but moreso in land area. If the same land area centered around Raleigh was considered the whole "Raleigh metro area" the area where the "affordable houses" are would be well past sanford to the south, almost to Greensboro to the west, probably somwhere around Wilson to the East, and past the VA border to the North. I think you'd have to the be the first person I've ever heard of on this forum who seems to think that a metro area staying "afforable" simply because it keeps building and sprawling further and further out is actually a good thing.
I hope you enjoy NC and should be happy you got in before everything gets expensive. You will be able to "cash out" as so many LI'ers are doing now, and move on to Kentucky (or where ever the new "in" place happnes to be several years down the road) within a decade or so!
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