Thursday, October 1, 2026
Second in a series about housing on Long Island.
The struggle to afford a place to live has become more than a financial burden; it is a daily fight for stability. Rising rents, mounting utility bills and unexpected repair costs are forcing residents to confront harsh realities, from disrupted childhoods to impossible choices for older adults. With limited inventory, rising costs, and affordability slipping further out of reach, the crisis is reshaping daily life, straining mental health, and widening the gap between those able to remain secure and those who can’t.
Karen Wihlt, 58, sat in a Bethpage hotel room earlier this month with her service dog, Lennon, unsure of where she would go once her prepaid stay ended. After a series of personal losses and financial setbacks, she is now facing the prospect of homelessness.
Wihlt grew up in New Jersey and moved to Long Island in 2008 to support her wife at the time during a custody battle. She sold her home and restaurant business to relocate, hoping to create stability for her partner’s children. The couple lived in Plainview until their 22-year relationship ended three years ago.
“I left everything. I only took my clothes and my dog,” Wihlt said, explaining that she walked away from the house they rented for $3,000 a month.
She later rented an apartment in Bethpage, but struggled to cover the rent on her $1,300 monthly disability income. Her focus, she said, has always been Lennon. “My main concern is somebody being good to my dog,” she said.
Wihlt eventually moved into a Levittown home owned by her best friend, who cared for her as she underwent several knee surgeries. But her friend died suddenly in March. Wihlt remained in the home until his relatives reclaimed the property. While she was away visiting a friend, police changed the locks.
“When I came back, I was told I didn’t have a home anymore,” she said.
With no car and little money, Wihlt relied on friends to pay for her temporary stay at an Extended Stay America hotel. But she said those funds are nearly exhausted. “I don’t know where I’m going to be,” she said. “I just want a safe little spot.”
Wihlt’s difficulties are compounded by her search for housing where a dog is allowed. Although Lennon is a registered service animal, she said, landlords find reasons to deny her applications once they learn about him. “Everything is fine until I say I have a dog,” she said.
An experienced chef, Wihlt said she has helped open nearly 20 restaurants across Long Island. But she has not worked in years due to her health issues.
Now, she says, Lennon keeps her going. “If I didn’t have him, I don’t know if I’d still be here,” she said.
Wihlt has applied for assistance from Nassau County’s Department of Social Services, but was told her $1,300 monthly income is too high for her to qualify. “They told me to spend my money and come back when I have nothing,” she said.
The human cost of housing
The struggle to find affordable housing is not just about financial hardship. It often carries deep emotional consequences, including depression, anxiety and trauma, according to Peggy Boyd, a licensed master social worker and vice president of advocacy and community services at the Family Service League.
“As a human service agency with several shelters for both individuals and families, we most often see our homeless population suffer from depression and a huge sense of hopelessness,” Boyd said. “Additionally, their lives are riddled with trauma, stress and anxiety.”
The long-term relationship between homelessness and mental health, she explained, is complex. Instability can worsen existing conditions or spark new ones, and lasting solutions require a multifaceted approach. “Addressing the mental health needs of homeless individuals requires providing accessible and affordable mental health services, supportive housing and social support,” Boyd said.
While housing insecurity impacts people across all demographics, she emphasized that children and adolescents face unique risks. “Children are one of the fastest-growing segments of the homeless population in the United States,” Boyd said. “They’re often hidden, living in cars, staying on and off with relatives or at motels, and bouncing between temporary shelters. Their reality is marked by uncertainty, fear and loss of routine — all critical elements for healthy development.”
The Family Service League supports a “Housing First” model, Boyd noted, which prioritizes getting individuals and families into permanent housing quickly and without preconditions such as completing treatment programs. “The quicker we move children and their families into permanent housing, the greater the outcome for all,” she said. Integrating mental health professionals with housing advocates, offering therapy, medication management and skill-building, is critical to long-term stability, she added.
“Family Service League supports the concept of regionalizing the poverty threshold on Long Island, recognizing that the current national standard does not accurately reflect the high cost of living in the area,” Boyd added. The organization backs the proposed Poverty Line Act, federal legislation that would adjust the poverty level to reflect real costs of living and allow for regional differences.
“Homelessness is costly in terms of taxpayer dollars and human life,” Boyd said. “The best results always come in providing support to prevent homelessness in the first place.”
FDNY lieutenant, fiancée struggle to afford a home
Brandon Webber has spent 12 years saving lives as a lieutenant with FDNY Emergency Medical Services. But despite working long shifts and holding down other side jobs, the 35-year-old says that he and his fiancée, Alexa Rubinstein, also 35, are still unable to achieve what they thought would be a natural next step in their lives: owning a home on Long Island.
Webber works 12-hour shifts that often start before dawn. His schedule frequently stretches into overtime, and he supplements his income with two additional paramedic jobs. “We are the lowest-paid service in the city,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe our work reflects the money that we’re supposed to be making. That’s why I need to have three jobs. Sometimes it can be a little bit rough.”
Rubinstein, a preschool director, commutes from their two-bedroom apartment in Farmingdale into Queens, a two-hour trip each way. The couple moved in in June, after months of searching for a place that accepted pets. The apartment, with utilities included and modest amenities like a washer and dryer, costs more than $2,500 a month.
Just a decade ago, Webber recalled, he was paying $600 for his share of a much larger apartment. “The price for rentals … compared to 10 years ago have skyrocketed,” he said.
Earlier this year, the couple considered buying a house in North Bellmore that could have accommodated Webber’s mother in a mother-daughter setup. The house had features they wanted — a backyard, a pool and solar panels — but the numbers didn’t work.
“Our mortgage was going to be about the same as our rent, north of $2,500, but that didn’t include the basic necessities,” Webber said. Buying the house would have meant draining their savings or taking out a $50,000 pension loan, something he was reluctant to do. “I did not want to live literally paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “That’s not a way to live.”
“If something catastrophic broke that needed immediate repair, where’s that going to come from?” Rubinstein said. “We’d have almost no savings, because we put it all down on the house.”
Webber acknowledged that he struggles with feelings of failure, despite his professional success. “There’s a mentality that I’m a failure,” he said. “You would think we would be able to afford it in the place that we grew up and loved.”
Rubinstein said she tries to keep perspective, noting that many of their friends who bought homes did so before the pandemic, when prices were less prohibitive. Now, as rents rise and homeownership remains out of reach, Webber said the strain continues to weigh on them. “We’re both college graduates, we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing,” he said. “It feels impossible.”
Working just to survive
Denise Minicozzi never thought she would need two jobs just to stay afloat on Long Island. At 60, she splits her time as a waitress at Jeanine’s American Bistro, in Glen Cove, and as a part-time worker at an assisted-living facility in Bayville, all while struggling to keep pace with the soaring cost of rent.
She and her longtime boyfriend, Larry O’Connell, a retiree, rent a modest Cape Cod-style home in Bayville for $4,200 a month. The house, she said, comes without a garage, with cramped living space and a long list of repairs the landlord has left unaddressed.
Minicozzi said she is also responsible for utilities and covering any damages inside the home. Food, gas and other basic needs are on a tight budget.
She said she feels like she and O’Connell are being priced out of the community they call home. Their rent is set to rise to $4,500, and the landlord has already signaled she may push it to $5,000 if they decide to leave.
“I love New York. It’s always going to be my home,” Minicozzi said. “But I really did not realize how expensive it was until I got back here.”
The couple is now talking about moving to North Carolina or Pennsylvania, where Minicozzi said they could stretch their dollars further and maybe even consider buying instead of renting.
“It’s not that we want to leave,” she said. “But here it feels like we’re working just to survive. We’re paying all this money, but we don’t have security. We don’t know what’s going to happen next year or even next month.”
For now, she continues to work the long hours and cover the bills, holding on to her ties to Long Island while acknowledging that the future may take her elsewhere.
“I never thought I’d be in this position at my age,” Minicozzi said. “It shouldn’t be this hard just to have a roof over your head.”
Long Island is losing its future without affordable housing
Assemblyman Charles Lavine, who represents the 13th District, says the high cost of housing on Long Island is pushing middle-class families out and threatening the region’s future.
Lavine, whose district includes Glen Cove, Hicksville, Westbury and several affluent North Shore suburbs, said the “universal concern” among his constituents is that buying a home has become an option only for the wealthy. “Getting a home is at least a $600,000 to $700,000 experience,” he said, adding that steep prices have forced many residents to abandon the dream of homeownership.
Lavine has made affordable housing funding a top priority in Albany. He pointed to millions of dollars in state aid allocated in recent years, including a $100 million pro-housing-communities program designed to help municipalities like Westbury, Port Jefferson and Hicksville build more affordable homes.
“This has been one of Gov. (Kathy) Hochul’s cornerstone projects,” Lavine said. “Over the course of the last several years, there have been actually billions of dollars in state funding provided for housing.”
But state money alone will not solve the crisis, he cautioned. Federal investment in housing has been lacking for decades, with the last meaningful boost dating back to the Clinton administration.
But such efforts, Lavine said, along with transit-oriented development in places like Mineola and Hicksville, are essential for growth. Building near Long Island Rail Road stations, he argued, makes communities more attractive to young families and workers.
Still, Lavine said, local governments continue to resist new projects, leaving supply stagnant and prices climbing. “Without more housing, the housing that exists just becomes more and more and more expensive,” he said. “It’s just basic supply-and-demand economics.”
The consequences, he warned, extend far beyond families struggling to pay rent or buy a home. “If we cannot maintain and protect middle-class people to move to Long Island, we will lose our community,” Lavine said. “We are seeing a shrinking of our middle class. And that means our community is going to lose one of its most important components.”
