Shelter Island Heights, NY population, income and ZIP codes

Shelter Island Heights CDP is a very small community in New York, with 998 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #862 of 1,292 ranked by population — larger than 33% of them. The median age here is 69.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Heights CDP earn a median of $103,884 a year, 32.3% above the national figure of $78,538 and 13% 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 16.5% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Shelter Island Heights CDP is valued at $1,041,300, 243.2% above the national figure and 230% above the $315,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 10×, 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. 100% 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 10× 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. A median age of 69.4 puts Shelter Island Heights CDP well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

The Census withheld gross rent for Shelter Island Heights 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.