Long Island - it ain't so bad

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by majortom1981

So your saying i95 in conneticut NEVER EVER becomes a parking lot?

Or any of the little parkways? Good grief I have sat in more than my share of traffic in the Bronx, Westchester and CT.

[UsAll]

Having lived in New York City and having visited Long Island many many times over the years (as my parents lived there for 37 years) and having had to stay in Long Island for most of a year (to settle my mother's affairs and get my parents' house fixed up and sold), and now living in the greater Boston, MA area for the past nearly 20 years:

If the reasons I stay in New England were no longer prevalent, I could very well think of moving to Long Island (or perhaps elsewhere in the New York City area, such as Queens or Westchester) but IT IS JUST SO UNBELIEVABLY EXPENSIVE! (I'm particularly thinking about the cost of HOUSING, but then also utilities, taxes, the absolute need to own a car and nearly always have to use it to do EVERYTHING). And, being a single unmarried person with no children, I'm not looking to own a home all by myself (unless it is a very very small bungalow or cottage or what they call now a "tiny home"). Otherwise, if I can't have some tiny home of some type, I would have to live in some type of apartment, but NOT in a multi-level, multiple-dwelling-unit-type typical apartment building with neighbors above me, below me, and sharing walls with me on all sides. No, I would want to have an apartment out of someone's home with a separate entrance or buy into a two-family home. But I have found that, on Long Island, many citizens are opposed to there being apartments situated in a private home and/or are opposed to multi-family homes and frequently rail with anger about what they refer to as "illegal apartments" (this is railed against many, many times on the Long Island CITY-DATA FORUM at-large). By saying "illegal apatments", it conveys to me that it is written into many laws here that multi-family homes are forbidden in many or most areas and establshing even a single apartment in a structure not otherwise legally classified as a "multi-family home" is deemed as "illegal".

So there are very few options for me to consider Long Island unless I am willing and able to buy my own private home. But then I would want a very tiny home (fit for a single person or perhaps a cohabitating or married couple) and they are likely very very hard (if not nearly impossible) to find on Long Island (or at least anywhere that I would want to live). And I'm sure that the property taxes would be very high.

So you see, Long Island and New York City and environs, I LOVE you and yet you won't allow me to partake of you! And I'm not an impoverished person (having at least in the $300K range in net worth right now [as a single person] and with the likelihood of increasing this asset level through prudent financial and lifestyle management over the coming years). Yet that is not good enough for Long Island, New York City, Westchester, and New Jersey's Gold Coast. That is, I don't want to spend enormous amounts of money each month just to have an abode suitable for one person or for a couple and an adobe that is tolerable enough and in a tolerable-enough setting location-wise.

I'm not saying that greater Boston, Mass. and eastern Massachusetts is "affordable" in its own right; it is one of the more expensive places to live in the USA. Yet the NYC - LI metro area is notably more expensive than even the expensive Boston, Massachusetts metro area. So if I don't ever get to move back to the Long Island - New York City area, it is because it is UNREASONABLY COSTLY. I look at what many other parts of the country cost to live in (especially housing-wise) that offer the same suburban ambience and amenities as Long Island and the same urban ambience and amenities as New York City (relatively speaking) and it kills me. It is like a night-and-day difference.

So LONG ISLAND: I love you . . . but you seem to function, by-and-large, as some exclusive "members-only" country club. Like a protected haven for the very rich and well-to-do (or at least for FAMILIES with multiple well-earning breadwinners to bring in the income). For single persons like me (and one who, as illustrated earlier, is not a poor person), you raise the bar WAY WAY too high.