Wallet Watch newsletter: What are you willing to pay for wellness?
Wellness and fitness businesses are on the rise. Source: CoStar
What are you willing to pay for wellness?
This spring, a few friends and I paid $110 each for a day pass to a bathhouse in Queens with saunas marketed as offering different health benefits — from a Himalayan salt sauna promising relaxation to an infrared room promoted as a way to improve circulation. I can't say whether any of it actually did anything, but it was fun.
Businesses selling wellness services like those are a growing category on Long Island, Arielle Dollinger reports. About 30% of new retail leases in the region last year were signed by wellness and fitness businesses offering everything from cold plunges to vibration therapy and IV infusions.
A red-light therapy session at SWTHZ in Roslyn Heights. Credit: Dawn McCormick
Medical evidence supporting these treatments varies widely and physicians warn that some advertised benefits may be exaggerated or remain unproven. These services may also carry risks or be inappropriate for some people, and doctors say they should not replace healthy habits such as getting enough sleep, regular exercise and a balanced diet.
So I want to know: Which wellness services have you paid for, and which ones actually felt worth the money? How much would you spend to do them again? (Asking for journalism, of course — not because I'm looking for ideas).
Read more about Long Island's wellness industry here.
From our readers
Kim Rydberg from Facebook asks:
Why is rent so high since Covid?
As a commutable suburb outside New York City, Long Island is attractive to many because of its good schools, top-notch hospitals, thriving downtowns and easy access to beaches. What's not to love?
But a historically low number of homes for sale, along with limited land for development, regulatory obstacles, rising construction costs and local opposition, has contributed to a supply-and-demand imbalance that has pushed prices sharply higher since the pandemic, Newsday has reported.
Renters on Long Island in particular are facing what housing advocates have called a perfect storm of rising home prices, elevated mortgage rates and higher property tax and insurance costs driving up rent, my colleague Jonathan LaMantia and I reported earlier this summer.
You'll be hard-pressed to find an apartment under $2,500. But they exist, and so do other options for affordable housing, like rent-restricted apartments.
Here are some tips on where to look:
- New York State Homes and Community Renewal runs a database with details on affordable housing lotteries with state funding.
- The nonprofits Community Development Long Island and Long Island Housing Partnership often administer housing lotteries for private developers and post information on new lotteries and waitlists on their websites and social media.
- The New York State Department of Financial Services maintains a list of agencies that can help renters who are facing eviction or struggling to pay rent.
- If you're looking at cheap apartments, beware of fraudulent listings and scammers demanding money before letting you see the unit.
Have a question you'd like to submit? Confused by a bill? Spotted a price hike? Ask our team and we might answer it in the next edition. Email walletwatch@newsday.com or click here.
Brianne Ledda covers personal finance and affordability for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.
