Why Long Islanders move away — and why some still want to come back

When Evon Hart left Long Island for Phoenix in 2001, she was a 31-year-old massage therapist looking for somewhere she could afford to live. Twenty-five years later — now a mother, homeowner and yoga teacher — she plans to move back to Long Island.

She wants to be closer to her mother as she ages.

She misses Long Island, too — life near the ocean, the proximity to Manhattan, the changing seasons and the “genuine” personalities of New Yorkers.

“I've always wanted to end up back there. All of my family and closest friends are still there,” said Hart, who plans to reestablish her yoga business after she moves. “So many awesome things have happened here for me, but Phoenix is just not my place.”

Coming home will come with a financial tradeoff. Hart intends to pay more in rent than she currently pays toward her mortgage, and she’s not sure whether Long Island’s high home prices will ever allow her to buy a house.

In July, the median home sale price in Suffolk County was about $718,000, compared with about $475,000 in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, according to Redfin.

Hart’s choice captures a tension that came up again and again among Long Islanders who have moved away. Leaving can mean cheaper housing, lower taxes or more room in the budget. It can also mean leaving behind family, friends and a place that still feels like home. And wanting to come back doesn’t necessarily mean you can afford to.

Nearly 2,000 people commented on a Facebook post from a Newsday reporter seeking the experiences of Long Islanders who left. The responses were anecdotal, not a representative survey, but those who spoke with Newsday described that tradeoff: Some said life became more affordable elsewhere. Some would never move back. Others still think about it — or, like Hart, are trying to find a way home.

Since at least 2010, Long Island has seen a “general pattern of domestic migration loss,” according to a 2024 report from the Long Island Association, a business group.

Jan Vink, a demographics researcher with Cornell University, said Long Island’s larger net domestic migration losses in 2022 and 2023 likely reflected, in part, New York City residents returning to the boroughs after moving to Long Island during the pandemic. The losses have since narrowed: Long Island lost a net 10,894 residents to domestic migration in 2024 and 9,625 in 2025, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show.

High home prices, property taxes and a shortage of affordable rentals can make Long Island difficult to afford even for people who want to stay, said Larry Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

But, “the reality is, everybody’s not leaving,” he added. The housing market remains fiercely competitive, he said, and Long Islanders are willing to pay “through the proverbial nose” for the local education system.

Still, for some of those who have left, the financial advantages were immediate.

When leaving makes the math work

Carine Firestone, 67, has left Long Island, moved back and left again.

This time, the paralegal said she is not coming back.

She initially moved to Florida in 2004 with her husband and daughter to escape the rising cost of living and high property taxes they were paying on their home in East Rockaway. After divorcing in 2008, she and her daughter moved back to Long Island, renting in Bellmore to live near family.

Back on Long Island, Firestone was near family and returned to the downtowns and music scene she loved, often performing as a singer-songwriter.

But despite Long Island’s appeal, Firestone moved back to Florida in 2023 after rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Lindenhurst approached $3,000 per month — just below the $3,358 a typical two-bedroom rented for in the hamlet at the time, according to commercial real estate platform CoStar. As of Sept. 1, a two-bedroom in Lindenhurst typically rents for $3,595 per month.

Firestone said the lower cost of living in Florida has left her with more room in her budget, including for about $650 a month in Medicare-related expenses.

When she moved to Florida again, her rent was $1,800 per month for a two-bedroom apartment in a 55-and-older community.

Firestone loves the year-round warm weather and doesn’t miss the potholes or congestion in the metropolitan area.

“After three years, I am so happy here,” she said.

Still, there are things she misses about Long Island. Leaving has meant saying goodbye to people and places she loves.

“I wrote a song like 20 years ago about how New York will always be home to me,” she said. “I had to say goodbye to a life.”

The savings — and what gets left behind

James Biggers, 73, spent most of his life on Long Island. But eventually, after retiring, the retired master electrician and his wife, a former nurse, concluded they could no longer afford to stay.

In 2022, the couple moved to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, selling their Long Island home for about $527,000 and paying about $495,000 for their new place, which they had built just minutes from the ocean.

Their property taxes dropped from about $10,000 their final year on Long Island to $1,100 in South Carolina, although that bill has risen to $1,800 this year.

The median annual real estate taxes paid on owner-occupied homes in Georgetown County, where Biggers lives, were $1,190 in 2024, compared with $10,000 or more in both Nassau and Suffolk counties, according to a Tax Foundation analysis of census data. The underlying census measure covers owner-occupied housing units.

“I really did love Long Island,” he said, recalling weekends spent boating with friends as a “dream come true.”

“But it just got too costly to remain,” he said.

There’s less of a boating culture where they live in South Carolina, he said. On Long Island, “we could go to all these different restaurants up on the island and you could just pull your boat in and dock to eat. But down here, that doesn’t really exist. … So we sold the boat, which hurts.”

There are plenty of things they like about South Carolina. His wife plays pickleball, he takes 5-mile walks and they are still five minutes from the ocean. But the boat — and the Long Island life built around it — is gone.

Flourishing away from home

Alyssa Reid grew up in Kings Park but moved to New Bern, North Carolina, in 2018, when she was 23. At the time, she was dating someone in the Marine Corps who was stationed there.

When she first moved, she hated it. The change was difficult, she recalled. But now, she loves it. And her love for her new home has outlived the relationship that brought her there.

When she separated from her partner in 2020, instead of moving back to Long Island, she bought a house and ran for a seat on the board of a local no-kill shelter. She won.

In 2023, she started working for a local nonprofit that focuses on mental health and wellness. She’s met someone new and has adopted four dogs and three cats.

“I was very comfortable in my life on Long Island because I had been there for so long, and I had all my friends, and everything was just kind of set up for me,” she said. “When I moved here, I had to come up with ways to meet people, to grow.”

Sometimes, there’s a culture clash

Philip Tafone, 48, grew up in East Meadow and was active in the local music scene in the late 1990s, around the same time nationally recognized bands like Taking Back Sunday emerged on Long Island.

He felt stifled by Long Island culture as a young adult and moved around before eventually returning to build a career as a personal trainer and physical education teacher, while experimenting with making protein bars.

After his parents retired to Florida, they suggested he open a storefront nearby to sell his protein bars. In 2018, he did.

Tafone said he has seen tension between some longtime residents and Northerners who moved to the area after 2020, with complaints about development, congestion and higher prices. He said locals sometimes note that he arrived before the pandemic.

“You can be very happy in Florida if the things that are bothering you in Long Island are cost of living, traffic and just the general hustle-bustle,” he said. “It’s what you make of it.”

What the financial math leaves out

John Abrams said his family has lived on Long Island for nearly 350 years. The 70-year-old was born in the Rockaways and grew up in Nassau County, where everybody knew everybody, he recalled.

“If I didn’t know someone, they knew my brother or sister.”

But deep roots don’t pay the bills. He owned a residential cleaning service with his girlfriend until they followed her family to Florida in 2001, where they settled in Coconut Creek.

“Economically, I couldn’t get ahead,” he said, reflecting on the struggle to make a living on Long Island.

In Florida, his job paid well enough that he could buy a home and save for retirement. He liked his work in sales and hit it off with the owner of his company, who was from Rockaway Beach. He enjoys the warmer weather and said he was able to save more in part because Florida does not impose a personal income tax.

He bought a condo for about $166,000 in 2008 after the market crashed and currently pays just under $900 per month for his mortgage and property taxes.

Financially, Abrams said, the move made sense. But he misses the family he left behind. And, at heart, he’s still a New Yorker.

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to come back,” he said. “But I think about it all the time.”

Wanting to come home

Larry Kahan, 66, is originally from Queens, but he lived on Long Island for 20 years before moving to West Hartford, Connecticut, in 2009 for his job as a manager with Savers. Now retired, he wants to move back to Long Island to be closer to his friends there and in New York City.

He has been looking for apartments for less than $2,000 a month and said he relies on Social Security for income.

Among multifamily properties with five or more units tracked by CoStar, 17% had an average asking rent of less than $2,000 per month across all units, said Jared Koeck, associate director of market analytics at CoStar. The figure excludes senior, student and military housing, as well as corporate housing.

Kahan has made connections in Connecticut, he said, but his support system remains across the Sound.

Still searching for a Long Island apartment when his Connecticut lease came up for renewal, Kahan signed on for another year.

“I basically bought myself another year,” he said.