Awareness of New York’s gentrification and all its negative nuances has become increasingly widespread in recent decades, with the word’s cultural meaning evolving from a synonym with urban revitalization to a synonym for displacement and all that is bad about real estate development in New York City. Recently a “wealthy white recent college” graduate took to Reddit to seek advice on how to move to Brooklyn without being a gentrifier. They were predictably roasted.
A study releasted yesterday by real estate website StreetEasy ranked the most affordable NYC neighborhoods for grads to move to based on median entry-level salaries and quantity of “affordable inventory”. They were:
1. Bedford-Stuyvesant
2. Bushwick
3. Astoria
4. Crown Heights
5. Washington Heights
The Brooklyn picks are all historically minority neighborhoods which still retain a large portion of their respective longterm African American, Carribbean, and Hispanic communities. Why isn’t East New York on this list? What about the South Bronx? Shouldn’t those neighborhoods top the list of affordable areas for new grads to live, what with some of the lowest rents in the city? A map by RentHop showing the medianone-bedroom asking rent by subway stop actually puts none of the ranked most affordable nabes for recent grads among the lowest rent demographic.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to move to Brooklyn, with moving to Brooklyn, or with logging data about various neighborhoods. But to rank the best neighborhoods for grads with such narrowminded criteria that the end result is a list of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods where longtime communities are actively getting pushed out by young, diploma-touting renters is a bit much.
Move to Bed-Stuy if you like, no one’s going to stop you, but don’t do it because a tone-deaf algorithm said it made the most sense. Do your research first.