SEGREGATED BY DESIGN

Race and Ethnicity: Black

Race and Ethnicity: Latino

 Brownsville  has the lowest life expectancy in NYC, at 75.1 years.

 Brownsville  is one of the most segregated zip codes in NYC and has the largest concentration of public housing in the city.

It is 76% black, 20% Latino, 1% white and 1% Asian. 

 28%  of its residents live in poverty, compared to 20% citywide.

In contrast, life expectancy on the Upper East Side is the highest in the city at 85.9 years.

7% of residents on the Upper East Side live in poverty, compared to the 20% citywide.

People of color and immigrants in segregated neighborhoods are the most impacted by the housing crisis.

Fordham and University Heights, in the Bronx, are home to the  highest  rate of poverty in the city at 34%.

65% of the residents of this zip code are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their household income on rent and are forced to forgo basic necessities like food, medicine and utilities. This is the highest rate in the city. 

In 2018,  741 evictions  were performed by marshals in Fordham and University Heights, the second highest number in NYC. 

Fordham and University Heights are  69% Latino and 27% black, and 42% of residents  were born outside the United States.

  https://www.righttocounselnyc.org/ 

In 2017, New York City made history by becoming the first city in the US to pass a law providing legal counsel to all tenants facing eviction.

Local Law 136, passed in August 2017, ensures that low-income tenants are represented in eviction cases by attorneys when they defend their rights and their homes. The law is currently in effect in 20 zip codes in NYC but will be in full effect by 2022 so that "all income eligible tenants in NYC will have the right to an attorney when facing an eviction in Housing Court." 

The passage of the law is the result of three years of organizing by a group of tenant advocates, homeless advocates, senior advocates, disability advocates, academics, legal services organizations that came together to form the  Right to Council in NYC (RTCNYC) Coalition .

Queensbridge Houses, in Long Island City, is the largest housing project in the US and until recently has struggled with high rates of gun violence.

Of the over 300 public housing developments in New York City,  Queensbridge is one of 15 that account for 20% of all violent crime in the system. 

The development, which was opened in 1939, spans six blocks and includes 96 buildings.

In the 1950s, a policy that segregated public housing led to the transferral of most of the white families in Queensbridge to middle-income housing projects.

Today,  Queensbridge is 60% black and 30% Latino . 

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 38% of its residents live below the poverty line.  

But Long Island City, the surrounding neighborhood, is one of NYC’s most rapidly gentrifying areas.

  LIC is 43% white, and just 18% of its residents live below the poverty line. 

 The median household income at Queensbridge Houses is $15,000.  

J ust across the expressway, in the high-rise apartments in Hunters Point, the median income is $133,000. 

 696 Build Queensbridge  is a community organization that has been working to reduce and prevent violence in Queensbridge Houses since 2016. 696 is a chapter of Cure Violence, a national anti-violence organization whose prevention model is based on the idea that violence is a contagious disease and a threat to public health.

Staff members mediate conflict situations to prevent the escalation of violence, work with high-risk youth to direct them away from violence, and try to change community norms around the issue.

In NYC, residents of historically redlined neighborhoods are much more likely to go to the emergency room for asthma than residents of “low-risk” areas. 

Nationally,  1 in 11 children  suffers from asthma.

But in parts of the formerly redlined sections of the South Bronx, Harlem, and a section of Brooklyn known as “asthma alley,” the rate is closer to  1 in 4 . 

 Mott Haven and Melrose , in the South Bronx, are home to some of the highest rates of asthma in the city.

In Mott Haven and Melrose, the rate for child asthma emergency department visits is  647  out of every 10,000 children aged 5 to 14.

In comparison, the rate in the Financial District is 28 out of 10,000. 

In  Mott Haven and Melrose , 73% of the population is Latino and 24% is black.

29% of residents live below the poverty line. 

Four expressways run through or near the South Bronx, and the area contains  waste transfer stations  that handle close to 30% of NYC’s trash.

The exhaust fumes from the relentless truck traffic exacerbate asthma symptoms.

For children who live in poor housing, going inside provides little relief. Asthma is also triggered by chronic mold growth, rats, cockroaches, and other pests, which are most  prevalent in low-income neighborhoods .

Located in the South Bronx, AIRnyc’s community health workers meet people where they live to improve health, connect families to social care and build health equity at the community level. 

When it comes to dealing with asthma,  AIRnyc  uses reactive measures such as home-based interventions led by community health workers to ameliorate housing conditions and minimize triggers when landlords won’t. Although home visits can be daunting for residents and are often viewed as a “home investigation,” according to Ms. Brown, a.i.r. nyc has  had success in reducing school absenteeism and avoidable asthma-related emergency room visits by 65% .

www.air-nyc.org/

East Harlem is one of the neighborhoods in NYC where the state has invested the most in incarceration. 

East Harlem has been home to several “million dollar blocks,” areas where the state spends over $1 million a year to incarcerate the residents of a single census block.

 East Harlem is 50% Latino and 30% black.   23% of its residents  live in poverty. 

Disparities can also be seen in the rate of residents admitted to local jails.

  In 2016, the rate of jail incarceration for residents of East Harlem was 1,291 per every 100,000 adults. On the Upper East Side, the rate was 71 per 100,000.  

The Youth First Initiative Seeks to end youth imprisonment entirely by establishing a new national consensus against the imprisonment of kids in favor of investments in community programs that can put kids on track to success. 

 www.nokidsinprison.org 

President Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, an attempt to reduce the illegal use of drugs.

The war has expanded in the decades since its launch, and has not only  failed to reduce drug use , but  also to decrease the transmission of drug-related diseases , drug overdoses, and drug violence.

Though it failed to achieve its stated goal of reducing drug use, the war on drugs has disproportionately targeted poor people of color, who are incarcerated primarily for nonviolent and drug-related crimes that occur at almost identical rates in middle-class white neighborhoods and on college campuses.

Despite several  government surveys  showing that blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates, blacks, who make up 13% of the US population, account for  31% of those arrested for drug law violations  and nearly 40% of those in prison for them. 

Policing disparities for drug offenses are striking in NYC.

Between 2015 and 2018, black people across the city were arrested on low-level marijuana charges at eight times the rate of white people and Latinos were arrested at five times the rate of whites, according to a  2018 New York Times investigation . 

The gap was even starker in Manhattan where black people were arrested at fifteen times the rate of whites. 

Even in neighborhoods where people called the police to complain about marijuana at the same rate, arrests were higher in black neighborhoods.

Rates of calls of complaints about marijuana use were similar in Greenpoint and Canarsie.

In Canarsie, 85% of residents are black.

In Greenpoint, only 4% of residents are black.

The rate of arrests was four times in Canarsie than in higher than in Greenpoint.

In 2016, Williamsburg, Brooklyn was ranked as the most gentrified neighborhood in the city by the  NYU Furman Center .

Long home to a working-class and immigrant community, Williamsburg remained largely industrial until the 1990s even as artists who could no longer afford Manhattan rents began moving into industrial properties converted for residential use. 

However, it was the  rezoning plan , launched by the city in 2005, that dramatically gentrified the neighborhood, transforming former factories and warehouses into high-rise luxury condominiums, high-end hotels, upscale restaurants, and boutique shops.

Since the rezoning, rents have soared almost 70%. At the same time, the area’s white population has increased by 44%, while the Latino population decreased by 27%. 

The median household income increased from about $42,000 in 2010 to  $78,000 in 2018 .

For the low-income populations that have remained, rezoning has led to segregation in small pockets.

Gentrified Williamsburg makes clear that gentrification does not necessarily  equal integration . Integration is based on the ability of all people to live in racially and economically integrated neighborhoods, not just the ability of the wealthy to decide where they want to live.

The construction workers who build the new homes in gentrifying neighborhoods, cannot afford to live in them.

New York City is home to one of the most segregated public school systems in the country.

But segregation in NYC schools is unique in two ways. First, NYC schools are even more segregated than their neighborhoods, and second, it is often school choice policies that are driving school segregation.

This trend is increasingly common  in neighborhoods  undergoing gentrification and increasing in diversity.

In Downtown Brooklyn and its surrounding neighborhood,  60% of families, including 43% of white families, opt out of their zoned schools .

P.S. 287, an elementary school in Downtown Brooklyn, stands as a clear example of school choice driving segregation.

P.S. 287 is in a district that home to a majority black and Latino public housing project, but in recent years, more white families have moved into the zone.

White residents now make up 28% of the school’s zoned population and 46% of the neighborhood’s overall population.

 But in 2016-17, only two white children  attended PS 287.

 Though the neighborhood is 41% black and/or Latino, black and Latino children made up 90% of students at P.S. 287.  

But when it comes to segregation from access healthcare, the neighborhood ranks number one in New York City. 

Over  2  8%  of Jackson Heights residents over the age of 18 report not having insurance.

In comparison,  3%  of residents of Stuyvesant Town and Turtle Bay and the Upper East Side are uninsured.

The high rates of uninsured in Jackson Heights are strongly linked to race and immigration status and mirror a national trend.

  Immigrants  throughout the US are much less likely to have health insurance than US-born individuals. This is often due to language and cultural barriers, lower rates of employer-sponsored insurance, and  restrictions in eligibility .

Among all groups,  Hispanics  have the highest rates of uninsurance.

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While the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) was successful in expanding health insurance to around 20 million, all undocumented immigrants in the US (approximately 11 million) were  excluded  from its provisions.