Shelter Island, NY population, income and ZIP codes

Shelter Island CDP is a small town in New York, with 2,281 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #580 of 1,292 ranked by population — larger than 55% of them. The median age here is 40.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Shelter Island CDP earn a median of $129,410 a year, 64.8% above the national figure of $78,538 and 41% above the $91,806 median for the 847 New York cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 1.2% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Shelter Island CDP is valued at $1,019,000, 235.9% above the national figure and 223% above the $315,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 7.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 84.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

Home values sit at 7.9× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere.

The Census withheld gross rent for Shelter Island CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.