Altitude Sickness

IT has been the unbroken code of Long Island living, at least since Levittown and American suburbia were born in the 1940's: Buy a home, hold on to it and watch its value climb.

With only an occasional pause, the axiom has held true through recession, inflation and expansion, and the red-hot property market of recent years has done little to tarnish it. On paper, at least, homeowners have been rewarded as property values have soared to unprecedented heights.

But this paper prosperity comes at a cost, one that is growing so fast that it is starting to erode the benefits for anyone who is not ready to cash in now and relocate to some less-expensive region.

Over the last decade, home prices have outpaced incomes by such a wide margin that many of Long Island's festering problems - worsening shortages of rental housing and of lower-priced homes, taxes that are high and still rising, the sometimes prohibitive costs of doing business and providing social services, and the flight of young families - have become harder to ignore.