Younger generations are leaving Long Island. Why? How can we encourage them to stay, and make it possible?
Millennials & Generation Z Are Leaving Town
We’ve recently heard about a lot of boomers and members of Generation X leaving NY. Many are wealthy and are taking their businesses with them. Now, new data shows younger generations plan to jump on the next train out as soon as they can too.
A new survey by NextLI shows almost 70% of those between 18 and 34 years old plan to leave Long Island within the next five years. Only around 40% of all those interviewed in this age group hope to come back and retire here.
While 85% say they are proud to be from LI, it just seems that the cost of living is just too high. They simply can’t afford to live here any longer.
Why It’s Important To Keep Younger Generations On Long Island
These are your kids, grand kids, brothers and sisters and neighbors who make your community so great. They are your teachers and nurses.
You want them to live near them. Even aside from keeping up the local economy, we need quality workers to keep businesses open and public services running. The schools, healthcare and safe transportation. We need to keep the property tax burden down and spread around.
What Can We Do?
While respondents also indicated a very low trust in local law enforcement, 66% had student loan debt. Between these bills, federal income taxes, and NY state taxes and local property taxes, finding somewhere clean and safe to live can be virtually impossible.
This makes the number one thing we can do as keeping living costs down. A big part of that is lowering taxes. That will keep businesses open and hiring. It will allow residents to keep enough of a paycheck to afford somewhere to live. If we can all work to keep our communities safer and
Create more trust in the government and systems that could help a lot too. There is just too little transparency, and it seems little accountability to ensure tax dollars are used most efficiently.
Step one is obviously to challenge your own property tax bill, and share with the younger generations how to do the same, so that they can afford to stay here and have some hope.