House Costs Are Driving an Exodus

SUZANNE WHALEN grew up on Long Island, and she knows the script: Buy a house in the best school district you can afford and pay the price of extra stress, long hours at work and endless traffic until the children graduate.

When Suzanne, Sarah and Andrew Whalen moved to Bradenton, Fla., they could afford a bigger house.

But because she had a telecommuting job, which meant she could live anywhere, Ms. Whalen and her husband, Andrew, rewrote the second act. Last year, they sold their house in Farmingdale and moved to Bradenton, Fla., near Tampa Bay. Mr. Whalen is now staying home with their young daughter. Their property taxes have dropped from ,000 to about ,100, and they pay no state income tax.

"We have a bigger home and better life here in Florida than we could have ever had on Long Island," Ms. Whalen said. "The taxes alone have made it impossible for any young family to have a good life in New York."

A quest for affordable housing is drawing greater numbers of young people, families and empty nesters from the suburbs surrounding New York City and casting them out to destinations near and far, according to an analysis of migration data by The New York Times.

The Whalens are part of one of the fastest-growing segments: the exodus to central Florida. Nearly 9,000 taxpayers from Long Island followed that path in 2004, a 33 percent increase over 1996. But the new émigrés are also choosing destinations in gentrifying neighborhoods in the city, exurban communities in Pennsylvania and upstate, and boomtowns in other parts of the Sun Belt.

"I do think a lot of this movement - to Florida and the exurbs - reflects, in part, a 'housing affordability' movement, or what I have sometimes termed a 'middle class flight,' " William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in an e-mail message. "They'll move as far out as eastern Pennsylvania or northern Connecticut. But many are probably looking at Sun Belt markets, including central Florida, Georgia, North Carolina."

Not that there is any danger that Long Island will empty out. Thousands of people are still following the traditional migratory paths, from New York City to Long Island and other inner-ring suburbs like Westchester County and northeastern New Jersey. And, of course, many continue to have children when they arrive, so the Island's population is not declining.

But more people leave than arrive. The net emigration from Long Island was nearly 9,000 households in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available.

A number of patterns emerge from the analysis, which examined Internal Revenue Service data on taxpayers whose addresses changed from one county to another between tax years over the past decade.

¶Increasing numbers of Long Island's young people and empty nesters are emigrating to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The number of households that moved from the Island to the Bronx in 2004 was 48 percent higher than in 1996.

¶Middle-class flight from older suburbs to more distant communities is accelerating. On Long Island, that once meant a move from Nassau to Suffolk. Today, much of the Island's exurban migration may be occurring from western to eastern Suffolk, and thus would not be evident in the county-to-county statistics. What the statistics do show is a fast-increasing flow of migration from Long Island to exurbs in upstate New York, to Berks and Northampton Counties in Pennsylvania, to Hunterdon County in western New Jersey and to Litchfield County in Connecticut.

¶Increasing numbers of taxpayers are leaving the region entirely, bound for more-affordable suburbs and cities across the country, especially in central and northern Florida. The rate of migration from Long Island to Lake County, north of Orlando, has tripled since 1996. These migrants are not predominantly retirees; moves from Long Island to traditional coastal retirement destinations like St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach have declined.

"There seems to be a widening-out of the traditional city population (young people, minorities and immigrants), while suburbia moves further out," Dr. Frey wrote. "Pricey inner suburbs are spreading to mid-New Jersey and Connecticut, and affordable suburbs for young families are populating areas that had not previously been considered in New York's orbit."