Connecting the dots of Long Island life
This aerial image shows the community of Melville on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Connect-the-dots is considered a children's game.
And it's simple, right?
You draw a line from one point to the next to the next, and when you're done you've made the outline of a boat or a dog or some other easily identifiable picture.
We play the game when we get older, too, and have in some cases for centuries. We connect the dots in the sky to form constellations, and in math classes when we plot points on a graph, and metaphorically when we read a good mystery and align the clues to try to solve it.
And yet, we are maddeningly unable to play the game in some real-life situations where it would be most helpful if we could.
Case in point: The census results released this past week showing the movement of people off Long Island.
For the year ending July 2022, the region lost more than 24,000 people to domestic migration. The number was partially offset by more births than deaths and by immigration for a let loss of about 15,000, but neither number is good.
Now, one could try to take comfort by enumerating the problems these LI expats will face in their new homes. Florida is and likely will be getting even more ravaged by climate change than Long Island. Arizona is running out of water. North Carolina is getting more expensive. Texas is getting more … Texas.
But those rationalizations are only short-term feel-goods. And they do nothing to address the reality of this long-term trend. The only thing that changes from year to year is the specific numbers. And this year, like other years, they lead to fretting and teeth-gnashing and predictions of eventual doom.
This is one of those junctures when one should play connect-the-dots. Why is this happening and what can we do to address it?
The consensus is that this is a matter of affordability, or the lack thereof. Taxes are high and housing is expensive. New York ranks among the worst in the nation in both categories, and Long Island is among the worst in New York.
So finding the first dot is easy.
Now move to the second dot: How do we address that?
Again, it's not a difficult dot to find.
Grow the tax base with new businesses and build more housing that people can afford. It's a pretty unanimous prescription.
Now try to find the third dot, the one called execution. That's hard, because it's hidden by NIMBYism and community pushback and blindness and fear, making it more difficult to locate and support the places that are right for development. The housing conundrum is especially important here.
We know as an Island we're getting older. We know our collective future lies in getting young people to make homes here. We know that young people starting out don't have a ton of money. We know that renting an apartment or buying a modest, affordable home is the most viable way many young people have of starting down the road. We know a lot of young people who are unable to get out of their parents' houses because there's no place to go, so they go elsewhere.
We also know a lot of people at the other end of the age continuum who also no longer have a lot of money. And we know renting an apartment or buying a modest, affordable home would be the most viable way they have of continuing to live a good life here. And we know they can't get out of the houses they've owned and can no longer afford because there's no place to go, so they go elsewhere.
We know this. We lament this. But we refuse to connect the third dot and build the things that would keep people here.
Unfortunately, this is not a children's game. But it is one we could lose.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
