Wash Heights Rents Dropped In 2020, Helping Essential Workers

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — A new study was recently published that looks at the historic decline in New York City rents over the course of the pandemic and whether or not it helped the city's essential worker population.

For most of the five boroughs, the answer is an overwhelming no. However, it is a bit more complicated in Upper Manhattan.

Washington Heights and Inwood have the fourth-highest number of essential workers living in the area out of any in NYC, according to a March study by the Comptroller's office.

The study says there are a total of 24,626 essential workers that call Upper Manhattan their home — the most in the borough.

Across Washington Heights, about 391 apartments were available with rents affordable to essential workers last year, compared to just 148 in 2019, according to a study by the real estate site StreetEasy.

It's a 164 percent increase from 2019 to 2020 in a neighborhood that houses the most essential workers in Manhattan.

However, the same increase in affordable housing for essential workers was not seen in Inwood.

Inwood was one of the few neighborhoods in the borough that actually saw a decrease in available affordable housing from 2019 to 2020.

Affordable housing units in the neighborhood went from 95 to 89, according to the StreetEasy study.

The only other Manhattan neighborhoods that saw drops in the number of affordable housing units were Chelsea, the West Village, and Battery Park City. All areas that don't have nearly the same amount of essential workers living in them as Inwood.

Additionally, while a 164 percent drop in Washington Heights rent from 2019 to 2020 might seem like a staggering drop in price, it's not as steep as most other Manhattan neighborhoods.

Central Harlem saw a 420 percent drop in rent in the same span, the Upper West Side saw a 1,420 percent drop, and the Upper East Side saw its rent drop by 6,933 percent.

None of these areas house significant amounts of essential workers.

To find affordable apartments, the study used the average salary for New York's frontline essential workers — $55,973 — and found the listings where rent was no more than $1,400, or about 30 percent of the workers' monthly income.

The study's data on essential workers comes from a March 2020 report by the city comptroller's office, which looked at the boroughs of residence for public transit workers, grocery, convenience and drug store employees, health care workers, child care providers and other front-liners.

Just 12 percent of those essential workers live in Manhattan, the report found, compared to 28 percent in Brooklyn, 22 percent in Queens and 17 percent in the Bronx.

Patch reporter Nick Garber contributed to this report.