The NYC Furman Center is out with its annual report, “The State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods.” We always take a look at the Lower East Side-specific data to see how the neighborhood is changing. Here are a few takeaways:
The report is broken down by community district, in our case Community Board 3, which includes the Lower East Side, the East Village and most of Chinatown. In 2019, the estimated population was 167,128. 32.8% of the population identified as Asian, 25.4% as Hispanic, 30.3% as white and 7.6% as white. There wasn’t a huge amount of change vs. the year 2000. The Asian and Hispanic populations dropped by around 2 percentage points, while the white population went up about 2 points.
In 2019, households earning less than $20,000 per year were the largest group. That’s up slightly in the last decade. The largest change occurred in households earning between $100,000-$250,000 (from 14.9% in 2000 to 20.2% in 2019. At the same time the share of middle income households has dropped.
Median household income in 2019 was $42,010, about 40% less than citywide ($70,590). The poverty rate was 24.0% in 2019 as opposed to 16% in NYC as a whole.
Real median gross rent went from $990 in 2006 to $1,070 in 2019. Nearly 24% of renter households were severely rent burdened, meaning they spent more than half of their income on rent. Just under 24% of the rental apartments across the neighborhood were affordable at 80% of Area Median Income for New York City. That’s 6% lower than it was in 2010. In 2020, 23.8% of the rental units were in public housing. In the city as a whole, only 8.4% of the housing is located in NYCHA commplexes.
If you would like to have a look at the full report for youself, click here.
