Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?
Given Long Island’s accessible land property and the projected funding access to construct affordable housing [“A Tale Of Two Towns,” Oct. 7], perhaps the absence of affordable housing suggests LI does not welcome the young people and lower-income dwellers here and may regard them as trespassers amid the bourgeois.
The lack of affordable housing is suspect of a covert real estate strategy to keep Long Island as a provisional suburban refined neighborhood. If there isn’t a table setting for you—perhaps you weren’t invited? Essentially, if the affordable housing is not built, they won’t come. Thus, a real estate loophole is derived, falling between the cracks of real estate legality, to keep Long Island limited to the rich.
We need to question if Long Island’s VIP power players with clout really want everyone here. How else can one explain the absence of affordable housing when the access of land and prospect of funding is there?
It may conceivably be Long Island’s futuristic goal is to evolve as an island of suburban prosperity, gated as an entrance for a secluded homestead of bourgeois homeowners or Hamptons tourists and vacationers. However, no one told all the people knocking to get in.
As envisioned by yesteryear’s past developers, Long Island has prospered and grown tremendously over the last few decades, resulting in lucrative taxation accrued from commercial and housing residence. And yet, there isn’t room for all of us amid Long Island’s boom and thriving landscape.
The Long Island map polarizes income, building fences to separate the people. There is no solidarity and hometown lore escapes the people. Hopefully, all Long Islanders can join together across neighborhoods and boundaries that separate us to love our hometown—for no one leaves a place they love. Long Island—love it or leave it.
However, without affordable housing heartbroken young people will leave their home to find the affordable housing they aren’t finding here. Essentially, until there is affordable housing for young people would Long Island remain to be their home. Alas, once one leaves, you can never go home again.
Susan Marie Davniero, Lindenhurst
