Study: Williamsburg and Greenpoint Are NYC's Gentrification Capitals

Photo by Salem Eames

BROOKLYN, NY — Williamsburg and Greenpoint were the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city between 1990 and 2014, according to a new study from NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

To be classified as gentrifying, NYU required neighborhoods to meet two standards:

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

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

A total of 15 neighborhoods in New York City made that cut. Neighborhoods which were already considered "higher income" in 1990 were left out of the gentrification column, although many of them have also experienced rapid changes and rising rents.

With that in mind, here's what has happened in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (considered as one neighborhood area by NYU) in recent years.

• From 1990 to 2014, average rents citywide went up about 22.1 percent. Greenpoint and Williamsburg more than tripled that rate of increase, to 78.7 percent.

• Between 2000 and 2014, the median rent in Williamsburg and Greenpoint increased from $857 to $1,591. (A quick math note: Here’s a refresher on what median means. Furman's study used both average and median rent rates, although there appeared to be a relatively small difference between the two values.)

• The median household in Williamsburg and Greenpoint went from paying 27.3 percent of its income for rent in 2000 to paying 31.9 percent in 2014.

• From 2000 to 2014, the median household income in Williamsburg and Greenpoint rose from $39,555 to $57,891, an increase of 46 percent.

• Also during that time, the percentage of the area's population that was white grew by 9 percent, its black and Asian populations increased by 3 percent and its Hispanic population fell by 12 percent.

(You can check out Page 24 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 gentrifying neighborhood residents with a college degree has risen 121 percent since 1990, compared to 56 percent for the city overall.

• Citywide, the percent of people between 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 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 ticket up slightly citywide.

That said, today's low-income residents are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their rent in gentrifying neighborhoods.

In such areas, about 50 percent of households making between 50 and 80 percent of the 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.