May 11, 2003
Long Islanders Say They Are Happier Than New York City Residents
by David Winzelberg
Long Islanders are most concerned about jobs and traffic congestion,
but they're happier with where and how they live than residents of New York
City or its other suburban regions, according to a poll of Long Islanders
that its organizers say is the most comprehensive ever conducted.
The poll, commissioned by the Rauch Foundation, a Garden City-based philanthropic group, explored the perceptions of 1,387 Long Island residents about their quality of life and issues of concern. For comparison, 600 residents of New York City, 400 in its northern suburbs, and 300 in suburban New Jersey were also sampled, and Long Islanders appeared to be the group most pleased with life in their community.
While 67 percent of those polled in New Jersey and an equal percentage in the northern suburbs (including Orange, Rockland, Westchester and Fairfield counties) rated their quality of life as good or excellent, 74 percent of Long Islanders rated their quality of life the same way.
Long Islanders had a more pronounced sense of regional identity than the other groups surveyed, with 86 percent of Long Islanders saying they identified very or fairly strongly with their region. The equivalent figure for New York City residents was only 77 percent.
Long Island also was the only region of the four sampled where a majority of respondents said that, generally speaking, most people can be trusted.
But the goal of the Rauch survey, the first of three it plans to conduct, was not to help the Island blow its own horn but to identify community concerns and help foster regional thinking to address them. “If we can put some good information out there, we could be a catalyst for all the other civic groups to solve the problems we face," said Nancy Douzinas, foundation president.
Edward Blakely, dean of the Milano Institute at the New School University in Manhattan, and a consultant on the Rauch poll, said no previous polling efforts covered quality-of-life policy issues on Long Island in such depth.
Respondents to the telephone survey, conducted in December and January and released in mid-April, identified jobs as the biggest problem facing all of New York's suburban regions. But more Long Islanders cited traffic than crime as a problem, reversing the ranking in the city and the other suburbs.
The most serious environmental issue for all three suburban regions was uncontrolled development, although suburban residents also appear to be happy with their parks and beaches, according to poll results. At least 75 percent of Long Islanders rated their police protection, sanitation and public schools good or excellent. But most Long Islanders called their public transportation fair to poor, because it doesn't go where they are headed.
The poll results were welcomed by Mitchell Pally, a vice president for government affairs for the Long Island Association. “Surveying Long Islanders, having town meetings helps us identify the problems and understand the ramifications of the issues,” Mr. Pally said. “It could be very valuable.”
Mr. Pally said he was not surprised that jobs were mentioned most often given the stagnant state of the economy. But he also pointed out that the poll results showed that people are staying here longer. “Most people who have moved to Long Island find it's not only a great place to live, but a great place to stay and retire in,” he said.
Neal Lewis, executive director for the Long Island Neighborhood Network, said the poll would help to bring important concerns to the forefront, and indicated a change in the public's attitudes. “There is a growing agreement on what the priority issues are on Long Island," Mr. Lewis said. “Years ago, you couldn't bring up affordable housing, no politician would touch it. Now even business leaders are talking about it.”
According to the survey, only 5 percent of Long Islanders said housing was the biggest problem facing their community, but 92 percent said “housing for working people” was fairly or very important. The affordability issue, though not labeled specifically, is a thread found throughout the responses, said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island. “Jobs, the economy, and housing are all tied together with affordability,” he said.
The median rent for housing on Long Island ($964 in Nassau and $945 in Suffolk) is the highest of any of the counties within and around New York City, according to foundation statistics. One out of three renters on the Island, and one out of four homeowners, spend more than 35 percent of their household income for a place to live.
Mr. Alexander said he was not surprised that uncontrolled development made the top of the environmental complaint list. “People don't mind certain kinds of development within our communities,” he said. “But when they see new homes taking up a farm field, those become emotional images.”
Mr. Alexander, whose group promotes a re-emphasis on village downtowns as shopping and cultural centers, also suggested that some Long Island respondents took a decidedly rose-colored view of where they live. He scoffed at the survey's finding that 84 percent of Long Islanders agreed that they had a walkable and bikeable community. “That is not matched with our reality,” he said.
Craig Charney of Charney Research Institute in Manhattan, which conducted the poll, said the discrepancy could have come from a misunderstanding of the question or the way it was asked. He defended the general methodology, saying the sampling of Long Islanders closely matched the area's demographics from 2000 census figures.
But some contend that doesn't include everyone in the community. In his job as a public safety supervisor for the town of Huntington, John Ramirez said the biggest community problem where he works is immigration, which was cited by only 2 percent of respondents to the Rauch survey.
“They are not counting correctly,” he said. “It's
not accurate. I know what's there.”
The documented Hispanic population is growing faster than any other group
on Long Island, increasing almost 80 percent from the 1990 census to the 2000
census.
While 72 percent of Long Islanders polled said there was racial diversity in their communities, Long Island is still 76 percent white, and has fewer minorities than the New Jersey or northern suburbs.
The poll found that 69 percent of Long Islanders said race relations in their community were good or excellent. Surprisingly, black and Hispanic Long Islanders were slightly more likely to have a favorable impression of local race relations. But at the same time, lower-income blacks were the only group on the Island to rank police brutality as one of the three biggest local problems.
Some people were surprised by what wasn't mentioned in the poll. “I'm surprised that taxes were not considered one of the major problems,” said Jeff Lipman, 49, a dentist from Huntington. (He did not participate in the poll; Charney Research did not identify respondents willing to grant followup interviews.)
Mr. Charney said that although some respondents might have complained about taxes, a perennial Long Island lament, the question was never asked directly. But he suggested that later surveys in the Rauch Foundation series were addressing the issue, saying, “I have seen more recent polling that asks about problems facing government where taxes and budgets came out very high.”
The tax issue shows up in other ways, however. Although Long Island respondents said education ranked sixth on the local problem list, after the economy, traffic, crime, sprawl and housing, Beverly Wayne, 49, from Huntington, said education was the most important issue because “the biggest problem is finding a way to meet the needs of all the students with the limited resources available.”
The poll showed that 86 percent of Long Islanders belong to some kind of organization, like churches, neighborhood associations or labor unions, and 96 percent said a strong sense of community was fairly or very important. But almost none of those questioned said they worked as volunteers and very few were active in civic groups.
“People are not involved enough in what's going on in their community,” said Steven Landis, 56, of Hampton Bays. “They live in ignorant bliss.” Mr. Landis said the “threat of the casino being built in the next couple of weeks" was the biggest problem in his neighborhood, an allusion to plans by the Shinnecock Indians to build a gambling hall on tribal lands just west of the Shinnecock Canal.
Another example of a tendency among Long Islanders to be disconnected from their surroundings was the 21 percent who said they didn't know about the condition of their waterfront. “Many people here aren't aware of the water, which is ironic because we are the largest island contiguous to the U.S. mainland,” said Jay Tanski, a marine environmentalist with the New York Sea Grant program at Stony Brook University. Some of the ignorance has to do with lack of access, Mr. Tanski said, since a lot of Long Island waterfront, especially on the North Shore, is private.
Mr. Tanski agreed with the 54 percent of Long Island respondents who rated their waterfront good or excellent. “Given the level of development in this area, the quality of the waterfront is very high,” he said, adding that upland sources of pollution were the newest focus in maintaining a pristine shoreline.
The next Rauch poll, currently underway, focuses on children and families. The third is to address the economy. The three polls and an accompanying demographic study cost about $350,000, Ms. Douzinas said.
The Rauch Foundation was founded by Louis and Philip Rauch in 1961. The two brothers made their fortunes in the auto parts business in Brooklyn. Now the foundation helps fund civic, family and environmental causes throughout the Island.
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