Sunset Park Rents Up 24% From 1990: Study

Photo by Salem Eames

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — Sunset Park saw average rental prices increase about 24 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 Sunset Park among the city's 15 neighborhoods designated as "gentrifying" by NYU researchers.

To be considered "gentrifying," 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.

(Neighborhoods which were already considered "higher income" in 1990 were excluded from the "gentrifying" column, although many of them have also experienced rapid changes and rising rents.)

With that in mind, here are some of the specific changes Sunset Park has undergone in recent years.

• Between 2000 and 2014, the median rent in Sunset Park increased from about $1,000 to more than $1,300. (A quick math note: Here’s a refresher on what median means. Furman's study used both average and median rent rates for different calculations.)

• During that time period, the median household in Sunset Park went from setting aside 27.5 percent of its income for rent to setting aside 38.2 percent.

• From 2000 to 2014, the median household income in Sunset Park decreased very slightly, from $48,873 to $48,112.

• Also during that time, the percentage of the area's population that was white stayed flat at 23 percent. Its Hispanic population, however, shrunk from about half of the whole to 40 percent. Blacks shrunk from 2 percent to 1 percent of the whole. All this, while Sunset Park's Asian population boomed — increasing by 12 points to 34 percent of the whole.

(You can check out Page 30 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.