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Why the rejuvenation of areas like portions of Long Beach can not be repeated in other main street communities is odd. Bayshore should be a resort town...and no I am not kidding.
Patchogue and Bayshore, no question. It's not like people can say "affordable housing will bring a bad element in!!"
The bad element is already there in run-down illegal rentals.
As I mentioned, options here for a young professional at 45k, from a housing standpoint, are pretty lousy. We do not do the young professional workforce thing well. Why LI can not embrace the right kind of gentrification of some of these shore towns so that the condo/co-op/rental marketplace can grow in areas that need the injection of new residents is always surprising to me. Why the rejuvenation of areas like portions of Long Beach can not be repeated in other main street communities is odd. Bayshore should be a resort town...and no I am not kidding.
Funny you should say that....over the weekend I took a long drive on Montauk Highway through Western Suffolk and thought "jeez, this really looks just like places I've gone on vacation" (in all seriousness), namely Cape Cod and the Jersey Shore.....which I had never really thought of before. What gives? LI used to get that business......now it's all about The Hamptons and nothing else. I know a lot of the old time resort towns/summer communities (like Bay Shore) lost their luster once air travel became inexpensive, but even up until the 1960s it seems like NYC's middle class still considered places like Blue Point or whatever a summer destination. We've still got the same beaches as we did back then, so what's the difference?
Pre-boom, LI had a very nice selection of entry level homes for young families making a median salary for the area. You could find them in good schools and nice well kept areas. Your only option was not RP.
Things are currently limping along artificially buoyed by insane interest rates and federally backed borrowing... But, there's a ton of people underwater, more and more falling behind on payments. There's no bottom. So, folks ain't gonna "suck it up" and buy when they CAN'T, so it's either prices come down or people move away (which seems fine in your eyes). So what happens when the middle class is completely pushed out of LI - what does it look like 5, 10, 15 years from now?
You don't want to end up with the rich and the poor only... it's an ugly combination.
That's a major reason why I wouldn't buy here, even if I had the money--and I'm in my 40s. Some people enjoy renovations or working on a home, and more power to them. Me? I'd rather call the super and offer him a Coke while he's here.
In many ways, Long Island needs to come into the modern era. For example, I don't know anyone who has a garbage disposal. Maybe it has to do with how the sewage system is set up--I really don't know--but that's one of those details that's a gimme in many other parts of the country. For the first month I lived back up here, I had to remind myself not to stuff eggshells down the drain, and I kept reaching for a non-existent switch on the splashback.
It's also strange to me that very few apartments have washers and dryers in each unit, especially since separate entrances are supposed to be a selling point here. Who wants to leave their building and traipse across the grounds in snow or rain to do laundry? I have a washer/dryer, but I'm out in Holbrook. Couldn't find that in Babylon to save my life, or I'd still be living there. If I can't have a washer/dryer in the unit, forget the separate entrance: I'd rather have a walk-up with a common entrance and laundry facilities in the basement.
Oh, gawd, and central air. Again, had to come out to Holbrook to get that. My place in Babylon didn't even have a wall unit in the bedroom when I moved in! I had to fight tooth and nail to get one.
Just saying. Modern conveniences make a huge difference in the quality of life, at least for me.
P.S. Whoever repped me for post #47 at 8:49 a.m. today, thank you. You gave me a star. Have a bit of silly, old but good:
Good point about apartment complexes. I have run into many a shocked newcomer to LI who wants to rent and can only find buildings with few amenities or minimally appointed apartments (legal or not) located in someone's home.
It seems that the apartment buildings on LI are very old and any of them that were updated to include things like garbage disposals, dishwashers, central air, etc., etc., were packaged as co-ops and sold a long time ago.
In my never humble opinion, Long Island is an unholy rip-off.
Believe me, when people start grousing about civil service pensions, I have my own reasons for being annoyed with them, too. It's not about me paying taxes, it's about my guy having golden flippin' handcuffs, and I don't mean in the fun way!
Just wondering, but did you own your own home before? If so, did you find NOVA not to be a rip-off compared to LI? (You mention living in NOVA and other places.)
As for your guy's golden handcuffs: if he were to leave now, would he (a) forfeit everything in the pension plan and have to start from scratch saving for retirement or (b) would he still have what he's acquired up until now and have to supplement that amount with more retirement savings?
Finally, if you left LI, where would you go that you consider (a) not a rip-off and (b) not deadly boring?
Stop being snobbish Crooks. Clark is asking non-personal specific answers and its not fair for you to make it out as a personal assault, like most of your retorts to "LI is unaffordable" posts. Also, I don't think you even know what LI owes anyone, because you just have no answers, Its just a classic case of don't say bad things about my home, and get the heck out.... (and nothing more than that)
Ok, you made it here... thats really awesome, you are doing an excellent job at rubbing it into other who may have not. But, there are other cases too when people who are wealthier than you want to opt out for better value for money... your argument about owing anything really does not apply there, in case you haven't noticed. Try finding out where the wealthy want to stay (I would guess they would have better financial sense that you ... no ?)
Actually affordability is the #1 reason. But hey, you were stupid enough to buy in garden city and now complain about the taxes
How about a new concept - buy what you can afford.
Problem is ... where should she buy that has "bargain" real estate taxes on LI? Not happening. People are paying $8,000 a year for Roosevelt. She said she's paying around $12,000 for her home in Garden City. Unfortunately, $12,000 is fast becoming the "average" taxes around here ... all over ...
A lot of people did buy what they could afford. However, my taxes went from 4K to 7.5K in just a few years. While I can still afford it and be comfortable, I'm not willing to put up with much more of this crap.
And the proponents of the status quo when it comes to teacher and administrator salaries, pensions and other perks fight me TOOTH AND NAIL when I say it is not unreasonable that within 10 years, the real estate taxes of the average middle-class home on LI will grow to somewhere around $ high teens to $ low twenties per year!
Just wondering, but did you own your own home before? If so, did you find NOVA not to be a rip-off compared to LI? (You mention living in NOVA and other places.)
Finally, if you left LI, where would you go that you consider (a) not a rip-off and (b) not deadly boring?
Nope, I never could be arsed about home-ownership. I've said that before. Personal reasons for that.
I would not consider NoVA a ripoff, although it costs about the same amount of money to live there. Simply put, the job market is better there, the salaries are more reflective of the cost of living, the houses are newer and better maintained, there's more to do, and the people are happier (which was in Forbes or another mag, I believe, not too long ago, in a piece about the 10 happiest places to live in America).
The rest is not for public consumption. Sorry!
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Have a bit of silly, old but good:
