By Vincent Safuto staff writer
October 4, 2003
A recent conversation in the break room here at the Press Journal centered on the attraction Florida seems to hold for many.
I can't speak for others, but I know why I came to this state in 1986. Two words: affordable housing.
After my Marine Corps service, I landed a job at the post office in Hicksville, N.Y. While living with my parents in Queens was tolerable, I wanted my own apartment, but there was little rental housing available on Long Island, and most landlords did not want to rent to a single man in his early 20s.
I managed to rent a couple of places eventually, though I really wanted to buy a house.
But buying a home in the early- to mid-1980s on Long Island was not likely for me, especially on a postal salary of about $24,000.
You could get a "handyman special" for about $200,000, and one wag joked that about all you could do with one of those was hire a bulldozer and cart away the wreckage.
The cost of owning a home, once you managed to get the mortgage, was even more discouraging. Property taxes were very high and electricity rates were shocking.
The general advice was that a married couple should live in a parent's basement and save very aggressively for 20 years, and then they might have the down payment for a little house somewhere.
Various politicians and activists moaned about the affordable housing situation, but Long Island's towns and villages saw such housing as a threat to their property values and fought to prevent new construction of homes, condos and apartments, saying it would change their communities too much.
Newspapers would write about the affordable housing issue, and the Treasure Coast was one area constantly mentioned as a place for young Long Islanders to move to so they could have a piece of the American Dream.
I finally decided that almost anywhere in the country was preferable to Long Island, and in 1985 began making my plans. I transferred in the post office to West Palm Beach, and found apartments affordable on my salary. Several months after my arrival, I was able to buy a small home, and had money left over for things like a new car and a college education.
Just before I left Long Island, Levitt began building new homes there, and its ads announced that affordable housing had returned to the area.
The houses were priced at $99,990, but when you added in the bare options needed to make the place livable, you were looking at more than $160,000. But then what was left of your disposable income would end up in the hands of the tax collector and the dreaded Long Island Lighting Co.
I never regretted coming to Florida, and while the occasional hurricane is a worry, I feel fortunate that I can afford to have a little house for the cats and me, and still have money left over at the end of the month.
If that's the American Dream, count me in.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at ( Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).
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