More than one-third of Long Island residents would trade their single-family home for an apartment, condo or townhouse, according to the Long Island Index released this week by the Rauch Foundation. The 80-page report examines economic, population, housing, environmental, and other trends in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and finds that Long Island’s dependence on traditional suburban development patterns can be blamed for many of the region’s most pressing problems, particularly a 35 percent decline in residents aged 25-to-34 years between 1990 and 2006.

Long Island’s housing stock includes relatively few apartments and townhouses, and much of it is out of reach for lower and middle income families. Close to 2 in 5 households spend more than half of their income on rent or mortgage payments, and nearly 90 percent of Index respondents cite a lack of affordable housing as a “serious” or “very serious” problem. According to an analysis of Census data presented in the report, Long Island home prices more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, but inflation-adjusted incomes remained stagnant.

Eighty-five percent of Long Islanders currently live in single family homes, more than in other NYC suburbs. But housing prices and demographic changes are creating a strong demand for an alternative. Seniors and empty-nesters favor homes that are “close to downtown” and require “minimal home maintenance,” according to the Index. Clearly, perceived public resistance to higher-density downtown development has been overstated (see graph above).

With developable open space on Long Island quickly disappearing, the Index concludes that it just makes sense to increase housing and mixed-use development in the more than 100 downtowns in Nassau and Suffolk. With incentives to encourage higher density development, municipal zoning regulations that require new developments to include affordable housing, and local leaders willing to embrace transit-oriented development, more than half of Long Island’s long-term housing needs could be met in the region’s downtowns, according to the Index.

The report also examined transportation trends and found significant increases in “reverse commute” and Intra-Island trips by transit due to an expanding Long Island job market, even as overall LIRR ridership fell post-9/11. This finding lends strong support to the development of the Third Track project, an initiative strongly advocated for by a Tri-State-led coalition of labor, environmental, business and civic groups on Long Island. Also notable was a large increase in bus ridership across Long Island’s three bus systems, making the case that the historically neglected systems need greater support.

Long Island elected officials commended the report and its findings at a release earlier this week. But 4 years after the first Long Island Index was released, there is still no coordinated effort to forge policies that address the problems it identified. Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi has pushed the Nassau Hub as the centerpiece of a “New Suburbia” concept centered around transit-accessible, walkable, dense downtowns, but the county has said little in regards to new transit service required to support the project. (Nassau County has not helped its case by continuing to hold its contribution to Long Island Bus funding below 1999 levels [see MTR # 564].)

Several local communities are working to regrow their downtowns, as was evident at last year’s Vision Long Island Smart Growth Summit, but just as many continue to approve big-box projects which encourage driving, and NYSDOT’s Region 10 office abets them with reflexive road-widening projects. An MTA transit village program or an embrace of smart growth concepts by NYSDOT Region 10 would add state support to the smart growth momentum which exists at the local and county levels, and help fix some of the Island’s most pressing issues.