Young families appear to be fleeing from Garden State
No one said coping with our daily trials or tribulations were easy to handle, but there are many who are saying they have found an answer to their problems. New Jersey residents are leaving our state to seek and find their version of the "American dream."

It had a chilling effect for me since it has been accurately recorded that our citizenry is leaving the Garden State for greener pastures. Not a joyous contemplation for the new year? But then, who said life was a Garden of Roses, especially if the "roses" are from the "Garden State."

The number of citizens leaving New Jersey for other states has more than tripled since 2002. "Young families raising children want to live in single-family homes and that's extraordinarily difficult to do in New Jersey," says James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, co-author of the report "Where Have All the Dollars Gone," an analysis of New Jersey's changing migration patterns.

Dean Hughes reports that while senior citizens who are leaving to go to Florida are involved in the exodus equation, "younger" residents are heading for California, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Texas. It has reduced our population increase to just 0.2 percent, making New Jersey one of the 10 lowest growing states in the country.

Retirees and seniors may be heading for Florida to fill their remaining years in sunny comfort, but what about their children and grandchildren? With affordable housing out of reach for many of them and facing a faltering economy with increasing taxes and corruption, good jobs scarcer, energizing a major potential threat to our economy, attaining a coveted "American dream" appears to me to be almost impossible.

Retirees and seniors may be tanning in Florida, but the exodus appears to be a sad turn of events where their younger growing families are deciding to build their "American dream" elsewhere by escaping the withering gardens of the Garden State.

Herbert Resnick

Marlboro