Brain Drain

As Housing Prices Rise, Younger People Take Off

Publication: The Southampton Press

By Gianna Volpe

  Apr 28, 2014 10:36 AM 
 Apr 28, 2014 3:41 PM

Call it what you will—“brain drain” or “birth dearth”—but a recent study by Community Housing Innovations Inc. claims young talent is becoming increasingly rare in towns like Southampton and East Hampton due to high costs of living as well as a lack of jobs and affordable housing and rentals.

Overall, Long Island lost 12 percent of its 25- to 34-year-olds between 2000 and 2010, according to the nonprofit housing agency. That stands in contrast to a 6-percent loss in northern New Jersey and a 3-percent gain in New York City. The study claims age disparity is most severe in Long Island’s wealthiest suburbs.

Housing Innovations found that higher income municipalities like Westhampton, which lost 57 percent of 25- to 34 year-olds, have lost far more young adults than lower income municipalities such as Patchogue, which registered a 4-percent gain.

Tom Ruhle, East Hampton Town’s director of housing and community development, said this marked sparsity of millennials that has already begun to show its face along the forks, threatening community vitality.

“Fire departments are having trouble recruiting and are having to hire year-round EMTs because they don’t have enough volunteers,” said Mr. Ruhle. “It raises the question of where are we going to be in 30 years if this continues.”

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Suffolk County residents are already older, on average, than people across the United States as a whole—with an average in Suffolk County of 39.8 years compared to 37.2 years nationwide. Mr. Ruhle said the Housing Innovations claim that the disparity is more severe in wealthier areas can be demonstrated when dissecting the neighborhoods in East Hampton Town.

The average resident of East Hampton Village, he said, is 55.5 years old. Amagansett and Napeague came in at 52.2 and 55.4, while in Springs the average age is only 38.2 years old.

“Our population is slowly skewing older and older ... and that’s a big picture issue that we all have to look at,” Mr. Ruhle said.
Southampton Chamber of Commerce president Micah Schlendorf said the trend is affecting local businesses, whose owners are reporting increased difficulty in finding quality employees.

“A big issue we hear from chamber members is that it’s hard for them to find talented individuals to work for them—even part-time high school students to get started working for the local businesses, maybe go to school and come back and be interested in working there later on,” Mr. Schlendorf said. “That, unfortunately, seems to be diminishing because a lot of young ones are not coming back after school is over.”
Mr. Schlendorf said he believes high real estate costs, along with stigmas attached to the idea of workforce, or affordable, housing, are to blame for Long Island’s dwindling millennial population.

Eric Alexander of Vision Long Island, an advocacy organization that seeks to help local communities adapt to a changing world, suggested that towns and villages need to be willing to accommodate many young adults’ partiality to lively, walkable downtown areas.
“If Long Island wants to take advantage of young people’s preferences, which seem to be toward more urban living, we can, if we choose, adapt our downtowns to make places amenable for young people,” said Mr. Alexander. “The challenge for the East End is a lack of flexibility in allowing for the building types needed to make activities affordable enough.”

The CHI study claims millennials will continue migrating up and off-island to lower-cost urban enclaves like Brooklyn until there is a change in status quo on the literal home front, in addition to adapting downtown spaces to fit changing lifestyle preferences.
Former Southampton Town Supervisor Patrick Heaney said he believes this to be true.

“The way the zoning laws are configured in the Town of Southampton pretty much ensure that the only type of housing that will not be greeted with public outrage, public opposition or lack of political will is a small McMansion—and that’s discouraging,” Mr. Heaney said. “Someone who just gets out of college doesn’t have the equity to buy a house or a condo, so communities need to realize that if we were to ever put flesh on the bones of the ideas in our Comprehensive Master Plan, we need to have the courage to implement the ideas that appear in these studies.”

Mr. Heaney, legislative director for the Southampton Business Alliance, said he hopes the current Town Board will adopt legislation that creates standards for multifamily housing proposals to be directed immediately to the Planning Board if proper criteria is met.

“That way there could be a rational discussion based on the need for housing rather than the topic of multifamily housing in a Town Board room, where it’s just politicized,” Mr. Heaney said. “I say that because I was there. I know how difficult it is to get affordable housing.”

Current Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst did not return a call for comment.

The Southampton Housing Authority is currently partnered with developer Georgica Green Ventures on a proposed affordable housing project called Sandy Hollow Cove, which 25-year-old Tuckahoe resident Noelle Bailly, who works in real estate, said she opposes in favor of accessory apartments in private homes.

“It’s a really small lot, so we’re basically trying to figure out who’s behind it and why it has to be on this piece of property and why they’re forcing 28 rentals and now they’re calling it workforce housing,” said Ms. Bailly, who added she does not believe there is a local “brain drain” of her age group.
To her, the loss of local young people is a natural progression, not a problem. “Kids go,” Ms. Bailly said. “They go. I’m not from here. I’m from Montana. I left Montana and somebody goes and takes my place in Montana."

Itty Bitty Busy Bones

Hi there!

Thug Child Gangsta here checkin' in with an inadequately prepared update on what's been going down in my little world of freelance journalism. 

I covered the Katy's Courage 5K on Ssturday, April 5, for both the Sag Harbor Express and Dan's Papers, which was my first time covering an event for multiple publications. 

One of my photos graced the front cover of the Express and the story I wrote about the event may or may not represent my very first for a newspaper's sports section (Can't imagine that's true)

I think I also made the front cover of the Rockland County Times that Thursday, April 10, after covering the formation of the group, "Rockland Clergy for Social Justice" and writing that here represents the first time I realized I made two different front covers in two different counties on one day.

Check it out:

GIANNA VOLPE    Bronx-based Rabbi Ari Hart of Uri L’Tzedek—Orthodox for Social Justice—voiced his support of newly formed “Rockland Clergy for Social Justice” in the packed basement of Spring Valley’s First Baptist Church on Tuesday afternoon, when the group announced its intent to petition Governor Andrew Cuomo for immediate fiscal and administrative oversight over the East Ramapo Central School District.

Other things:

I photographed the first annual Horseradish party on Saturday, April 12, for Dan's Papers and even competed in the Bloody Mary contest,  placing third of 10 despite forgetting the Worcestershire sauce and both lemon and lime. 

It was there I learned Moustache Brewery was holding its soft opening the next day and I'm pretty sure I was the only member of the Press there.

I wrote that up as a story for last week's issue of Dan's Papers, in addition to photographing the grand opening of the brewery for this week's issue.

I am really excited about the fact that I just handed in two stories to the Southampton Press - the first two I've written in a long while and will not discuss as I believe they're both being held for next week's paper. 

Also wrote two pieces for the Sag Harbor Express - one on weed-eating goats and another about well-known local chef, George Hirsch. 

Just handed in my first of two upcoming magazine features for the Express, one of which I am incredibly excited about because it's a first-person feature and I love those. 

I write the other one tonight, but now I have to go shower and get ready for work at the bar.

Such is life for this busy little Gia!

My 27th birthday is coming up in June, so if you don't know what to get me, an acountant/personal assistant/both would be incredibly helpful!

Rock(l)and Roll

Just picked up a new publication (The Rockland County Times) and already love working for them. See my next post to read this week's piece on Blimpie's 50th anniversary. 

The following is the woebegone tale of how I came to be united with my latest 'client.' (Man, that's really fun to write)  

The day was Wednesday, March 19, and

I happened to be in the immediate area when RCT's Dylan Skriloff offered a story to the first-responder who wanted to cover one of Governor Andrew Cuomo's press conferences about property tax reform.

I'd been stranded at my father's house all day due to a case of lost keys and remember wondering aloud to myself (and the neighboring kitchen appliances), "They say everything happens for a reason, but I just do NOT understand what reason could be behind this."

A police officer had even helped me break into my car using a wooden spoon earlier in the afternoon (I think I could, at this point, write a book called "Breaking In: the 5-0 Way) to see if I'd left them inside the vehicle. I had no such luck, outside the fact that car alarms will, eventually, stop sounding/alerting everyone within a mile radius that you are  the hugest idiot in the universe.

But I digress.

I had just hopped out of the shower when I was alerted that I'd received the email that I had a possible chance to do the job of journalism, and further, that I was a twenty-or-so minute drive away from doing so.

"Ahhhhhhh - so THIS is why I lost my keys," I said, triumphant finger pointed toward the heavens, as my father pulled said keys from between a chair cushion I'd already searched several times over and handed them over to me with a facial expression denoting exactly that I am the biggest idiot in the universe (But I digress)

Both this event and Katy's Courage 5K, which took place yesterday AM in Sag Harbor, taught me that 

IT. IS. TIME. 

for me to get new camera equipment because this Nikon D500 is just not cutting it. Not even slightly. 

It will make an excellent "extra" camera, so I can FINALLY graduate to being the kind of pro who has two cameras at any given time (three counting an iPhone)

The photos were bleh and though I had taken notes, my iPhone had decided to stop recording at some point because it was crammed full of content.

(I have since upgraded to one with more space/have established back-up techniques to cull content and keep that from ever happening again)

However, I did get to interview our state governor, which is a pretty righteous rite of passage for any young journo. 

I also need a new tape recorder....

Is there any rich journalist (cue the canned laughter), or at least one who now has a talk show, who wants to help me get new audio/visual/computer equipment? 

(Cue the cricket reel) 

Following the event, I flew to a nearby diner and began to write furiously, but as I have some horrific Dell without so much as a genuine version of Windows (which it reminds me about every two minutes) three-quarters of my copy blasted off into a nearby dimension never to return when I was nearly finished and I then spent the next few hours trying to recreate the article from memory.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is - oh right - the moral of the story is, my dear, young journalism professionals, you need to somehow have enough money to be able to afford the best technology, or at least a computer with a genuine copy of Windows. 

I haven't quite figured out how to do that as a freelancer without going into further debt than my journalism degree has me, but once I do - you'll probably be the first ones I tell.

Revvin' up

                                       

I am incredibly excited to announce that I will be trimming down my daytime hours tending bar at Tweed's to focus exclusively on my freelance work.

Inserted above are my photos from Stephen Talkhouse's mid-winter beach party, taken on assignment for this week's issue of Dan's Papers.

I'm currently in New Orleans, but about to sit down and write a piece for them that will include a fairly big (IMO) local story scoop (my specialty!) - hopefully it will still be a scoop when it's published!

I will also be writing a feature for the Sag Harbor Express, which will be published in their upcoming 'Home & Garden' magazine. The newspaper takes a break from special pubs. in January and February, so I am way excited to be back at it for them. 

My editor, Kathryn Menu, always gives me incredibly interesting assignments, edits carefully without stomping out my voice or adding errors into my copy and is very thorough about her expectations for pieces, whether they be about deadlines, sources, style, etc.

I am blessed to have a number of truly excellent editors, but I have to give Ms. Menu credit for her kindness, patience and consistent diligence. 

Okay, that's enough yapping from this rookie for one afternoon.

I'm going to get writing over here in the French Quarter (which is ironic, as I am exactly one quarter Cajun) and continue revvin' myself up for the inevitability of national publication and super stardom!

And I will never forget those calculating few of you who have unjustly attempted to hold me back, knock me down or entirely destroy me.  

You are tiny people and I feel sorry for you. 

Copy comin' out the ears: No complaints here!

Hello loyal/adoring fans!

(Obviously that's a joke)

Today is a very exciting week in publishing for this kid reporter!

Not only do I have at least three pieces published in three different publications, but one of them was my very first first-person piece! 

(Cue the tune - Happy, happy, joy, joy)

The art of scalloping can be found in this month's Sag Harbor Express magazine: XO On The Go.

                                         

Sag Harbor's Al Daniels is the subject of "The Art Of Scalloping."

 Also have a piece in the current Southampton Press "design and architecture" supplement on the effects of technology on design, as well as a piece in this week's Long Island Business News on how to run a successful business, despite the East End's seasonally-driven economy. 

                                         

Also: Just wrote a feature about the Peconic ballet Theater for Dan's Papers and another about master Malian kora player, Yacouba Sissoko, for the Sag

Harbor Express!

Now I will pass out (promptly with any luck!)