Bed-Stuy Rents Up 36% Since 1990: Study

Photo by Salem Eames

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — Bed-Stuy saw average rents jump about 36 percent between 1990 and 2014, according to a new study from NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

This dramatic rise in rents was enough to rank Bed-Stuy among the city's 15 neighborhoods designated as "gentrifying" by NYU researchers.

Equally dramatic were the study's findings on Bed-Stuy's shifting racial makeup.

Between 2000 and 2014, the white percentage of the neighborhood's population increased drastically, from 2 percent to 21 percent, NYU found.

Blacks made up 74 percent of Bed-Stuy's population in 2000, the study showed — but by 2014, they were down to just 53 percent of the whole. (The neighborhood's Hispanic and Asian populations were relatively static during this time.)

To be considered "gentrifying" in the study, NYU required neighborhoods to meet two criteria:

a) The neighborhood had to be considered "low income" in 1990, meaning its average household income was in the bottom 40 percent of the city’s neighborhoods.

b) In the time since 1990, the neighborhood’s rents had to have increased faster than the median rate of increase for the city.

With all of that in mind, here are some of the specific changes Bed-Stuy has undergone in recent years.

• Between 2000 and 2014, the median rent in the neighborhood area increased from $760 to about $1,070. (A quick math note: Here’s a refresher on what median means. Furman's study used both average and median rental rates for different calculations.)

• The median household in the area went from putting 29.3 percent of its income toward rent in 2000 to putting 33.7 percent of its income toward rent in 2014

• During that same time period, the median household income in Bed-Stuy increased only slightly, from $33,563 to 34,722.

(You can check out Page 26 of this Furman Center document for more detailed information on the above figures.)

What trends do gentrifying neighborhoods share?

The NYU study also came to a number of conclusions on the characteristics gentrifying neighborhoods share, compared to non-gentrifying parts of the city. Among them:

• Between 2000 and 2010, the number of housing units in gentrifying areas increased by 7.2 percent, compared to 5.5 percent in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. This happened even though gentrifying neighborhoods have grown more slowly in population than the city overall.

• The percentage of residents in gentrifying neighborhoods holding college degrees has risen 121 percent since 1990 — compared to a growth of only 56 percent in the city overall.

• Citywide, the percent of residents between the ages of 20 and 34 has dropped slightly since 1990; in gentrifying areas, however, it has increased nearly 2 percent.

What about race?

The white percentage of NYC's gentrifying neighborhoods has increased since 1990, even as the white percentage of the city's population has fallen significantly.

At the same time, the black populations in gentrifying neighborhoods have been shrinking faster than they have citywide. And Asian and Hispanic populations have increased, percentage-wise, in both gentrifying neighborhoods and in the city overall.

The cost of living

When it comes to affordability, since 1990, gentrifying areas have seen a small drop in the percentage of their populations living below the poverty line, even as that number has ticked up slightly citywide.

And, the study shows, today's low-income residents are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their rent in gentrifying neighborhoods.

In such areas, around half of all households making between 50 and 80 percent of their neighborhood's median income are "rent burdened" — meaning they dedicate 30 percent or more of their pre-tax income to rent. In 2000, only 29 percent of those households were rent burdened.