LI's Affordable Housing Crisis Forces Woman To Move: 'My Heart Hurts'

RIVERHEAD, NY — As the affordable housing crisis escalates on the East End and across Long Island, one woman, who has shared her struggles with Patch during the past year, has announced that the time has come to leave all she's ever known and head to the West Coast, where she hopes to find a place to call home — and inner peace, rather than a constant struggle for survival.

This year, Erin Narumi Prince had to move from the rental home she and her father shared in Riverhead for years. What was already a lack of affordable housing on the East End turned into a crisis for many during the pandemic, when scores headed east to their second homes, sending property values skyrocketing. Subsequently, many homeowners put what had been rentals on the market, leaving tenants without affordable options — or none at all.

Now, Erin Narumi Prince has created a GoFundMe, "Erin's Big West Coast Move," to help her with her journey to her next chapter in Oregon.

"I’m moving to the West Coast from New York to better my safety, mental health and life. I’m reaching out for some help — as I cannot do this alone fiscally. The jump is long and there’s not a shortcut," she wrote.

She added that she has a little over a month to pack up and leave her current home.

"Life loves to throw curveballs," she said. "It’s also my birthday early this month. What better gift to be able to give than a renewed second chance starting over in life?"

Moving, she said, "is one of the scariest things I’ll be doing as I’ve lived in one same general area for the whole 40 years of my life, and I’m having to do it solo — on a very shoestring budget."

Thankfully, she has someone who is helping with moving her car and belongings west, but she has other expenses, including car repairs, as well as the costs for fuel, budget lodging, a small trailer and veterinary expenses for her cats.

She'd hopefully like to have enough funds left over for an extra month's security fallback as she searches for employment, as well as for food and supplies.

"Please help me to reach this goal, so I begin my life anew. Where I can heal, grow, and thrive," Prince said.

Speaking with Patch about the move, Prince described the emotional turmoil. "I’m filled with immense sadness that I cannot stay. I will miss my summer days in the sun, along with the quiet lapping waters of rocky, sandy shores, and my nights camping with a fire there. The bountiful open dark skies of the farm fields. The plentiful local farm stands, and the small town familiarity," she said.

She added: "I really didn’t want to end this way. And I was hoping to stay. I was hoping to stay and set down some roots and live that content life we all seek. But life has other plans."

Prince, like so many others, was forced to seek alternatives when the cost of housing on the East End became insurmountable.

"It is such a shame that the asking price of something as humble as a single room is what it is," she said. "Let alone so called 'market value' apartments."

For those who are gig workers or others, to survive, it's often necessary to hold down two to three jobs just to make ends meet, Prince said.

"There is a morbid 'what’s the point in struggling like that?' feeling," she said. "Where you spend so much time away from the privacy and sacred living space, you don’t get to enjoy it."

Looking ahead, she said, perhaps the move out west will give her what she couldn’t find on Long Island. "I’m not exactly sure what I’m jumping into," she said. "All I know is that the sandbar we rest on is sinking for most, unless you have the money to stay afloat."

She added: "To all my friends, and to my beloved clients and community, I’m sorry I can’t stay. It took me 15 years to get to know you all, and now I’m sad I have to say good-bye."

Prince said most of all, she is devastated about having to leave her father. "My heart hurts to leave my dad," she said. "I wish it wasn't like this. I really do feel badly as a daughter— because he’s always looked at for me, and now I can’t look out for him."

But there are no options, she said. "Neither of us have a choice. No one‘s ever offered me a room yet, one that’s affordable, and at this new place, I can take my cats."

And so, she's faced with the full range of emotions as she looks forward. "There are moments when I’m fine, and then it’s like waves of grief. I’m okay, and then I’m sad about something. I’m stable again and then it comes back. I’ve lived away from home before. But never something so final."

In May, Erin Narumi Prince shared her plight with Patch.

Wealth, Prince said, isn’t defined as a mansion with a water view.

"Richness is a cottage with a yard for growing flowers and a garden. Richness is peace of mind and heart, birdsong, and touching grass," she said. "Some of us want nothing more than the latter, and it shouldn’t cost a fortune for a simple, quiet life with 'less space.' That something simple shouldn’t come with the price tag; something that costs as much as one of those larger houses."

Prince told Patch she was one of many voices "lost in the echo chamber of 'affordable housing,' where one side complains that people should 'work harder' and hustle 80-plus hours a week, having had so much handed to them, and the other side, who can’t afford to dream or grow where their parents and parents before them did because the area has been swallowed by greed."

She added: "I really wish that the affordable housing crisis would gain more attention, other than just people turning a blind eye to it," Prince said. "My wish is that other people know that it’s not that this generation doesn’t want to work hard — it's that this generation doesn’t want to work 80 hours a week, with three to four jobs, just to try and make ends meet‚ and not even survive. It's maddening, and it's so saddening, that people think an affordable monthly rent equals $2,500."

To donate to the GoFundMe, click here.