The readers of this newspaper are indeed fortunate to have an editor as conversant in public policy as Steven Blank. When compared to Newsday’s limp editorials, Mr. Blank demonstrates a grasp that escapes Long Island’s newspaper of record.

Few would have noticed the data that contradicted the common wisdom that the wealthy were leaving New York but were actually migrating back in. Seems you can’t do much deal-making in Bumstuck Village, so back to Emerald City we go.

Two of this newspaper’s regulars: George Marlin, ostensibly a “Conservative” and Adam Haber, who, to my endless amusement, fancies himself a “progressive,” both issued a cri de coeur over the plight of billionaires forced into refugee status by higher state income taxes.

You would think they were Okies out of a Steinbeck novel, loading up their Escalades with all they had, wearing out their Fratelli Rosetti shoes, trudging their way to….Miami.

Anyone could have figured out the SALT cap cost the wealthy more than a miniscule hike in the State income tax.

If SALT didn’t trigger an exodus, a tax increase wouldn’t. And I pointed out that the policies these two tolerated were exacting a heavy price on people of lesser means. And they couldn’t have cared less.

Moreover, there are ways to cut taxes in this state. But that would derail the gravy train so many of their cohorts depend upon.

Which brings us back to the housing problem. It’s time to admit that Long Island’s housing template has outlasted the reality on the ground.

Mr. Marlin wrote: “It is my firm belief that owning a single-family home on a plot of land in suburbia gives people true independence of mind and soul and is the only real independence from the state and their own collective lot.”

My God, man. Get a grip. Or at least go condo.

He wrote of his valiant struggle to buy a house in 1983 when interest rates were high.

Fortunately, the high rates also depressed home prices and Mr. Marlin was able to refinance just two years later owning a property with reflated value and a lower carrying cost. The Battle of Fort Marlin was not quite the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi as he portrayed it.

In fact, far from being the result of diligence and hard work, Mr. Marlin was simply born at the right time. Housing costs were about 4.5 times a person’s income back then. Today it’s 11 times.

He also failed to note the population of the United States in 1983 was 260 million. Today, it’s 332 million.

But Nassau’s unthinking fealty to the Levitt template has put it in a death spiral.

Consider the bizarre results: A county of 1.3 million people with less than 3% of its housing stock dedicated to young singles, the unmarried and the widowed. That’s not normal.

This is a recipe for creating the very social dysfunction Mr. Marlin regularly rails against. The result is a nation like Japan has fewer than 4000 homeless. We have over 500,000 because the policies Mr. Marlin prefers have caused untold misery. Mr. Marlin thinks homelessness is a sign of a moral failing. It is.

It’s the very housing policy he advocates.

In the end, this has strangled Nassau County, and the tourniquet it has placed itself in will only get tighter because the demographic reality we are living in will continue to manifest itself to the County’s detriment.

I can’t forget one of the local doyennes boasting- boasting! – that they were successful in blocking senior housing in Manhasset, and when it came to the proposed Brookfield project on the Macy’s parking lot, the attitude was “well, we’ll see about that!” The narcissism of these people never ceases to amaze me.

Neither does their self-destructive shortsightedness.

Oddly, while opposing residential development, they said nothing as hospital monopolies threw up millions of square feet in office and treatment facilities, with barely a single dwelling built to house the employees. The result is a heavily polluted and gridlocked mess.

But when someone proposes adding 30 apartment units, there’s always some yutz at a Town meeting with an Elmer Fudd voice whining “But what about da noise and da twaaaaaaafic?”

That’s why Gov. Hochul felt she had to take the keys away.

The truth is people don’t hate housing. They hate people.

What can be done? There’s one obvious remedy the County can take.

To be continued

Donald Davret

Roslyn