Name: What Rent Drop? Listed Prices Aren’t Budging Where COVID-19 Hit Hardest
Brand: thecity.nyc
SKU: thecity-nyc-16
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

What Rent Drop? Listed Prices Aren’t Budging Where COVID-19 Hit Hardest

preview

SHAREeasIn some parts of the city, rents have dropped since the COVID-19 crisis began. But for neighborhoods that felt the effects of the coronavirus most, listed prices have risen slightly, according to a new analysis.The annual by the apartment-listings site StreetEasy paints a very different price picture between the neighborhoods with the lowest coronavirus infection rates — primarily wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn — and the hardest-hit areas, mostly in Queens and The Bronx.Between February and July of this year, rents fell by 1.9% in the zip codes with the lowest COVID-19 rates in the city, like Battery Park City, Greenwich Village and Tribeca, according to the report, comprised of market-rate listing data.&nbsp;However, in the neighborhoods with the highest rates of COVID-19, per city health department data — East Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights topped the list — advertised rents have climbed a bit in the same time period, rising 0.3%.The findings contradict the claim that there’s an “exodus out of the city,” said Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy.“That’s specific to Manhattan, and a lot of these Manhattan-esque neighborhoods,” she said. Elsewhere in the city, “it’s a very different picture.”The StreetEasy report released Thursday analyzed six years of rental data in the five boroughs through July of 2020, comparing ZIP codes with the highest tested rates of COVID-19 per 100,000 people since the start of the pandemic with those with the lowest.&nbsp;Each pool of least- and most-affected neighborhoods was defined by StreetEasy by adding up top and bottom ZIP codes with the highest and lowest infection rates until they had 1 million people in each category.Over that period, listed rents in the most virus-affected neighborhood rose by 22.1% while the least-affected areas saw advertised prices rise only 10% over the same period.Some of the trend is attributable to the fact that, generally, areas with lower median rents tend to see price growth at rates faster than higher-priced neighborhoods, Wu noted — because “there’s more demand for affordable properties as other places get more expensive.”But it also points to a confluence of factors and “housing stressors” that overlap in the communities that have experienced high COVID-19 rates, said Barika Williams, executive director at the Association for Neighborhood &amp; Housing Development, a consortium of nonprofit development groups.&nbsp;Among the factors: overcrowding, a high share of families paying a large share of income on rent, and a concentration of essential workers. “What we’re seeing in the lower-income households and families — especially our immigrant communities, especially our Black and brown community — is that people are really staying put, trying to ride it out [and] having this month-to-month anxiety of, will I or won’t I be evicted?” Williams said.The NYU Furman Center also found the areas hardest-hit by the coronavirus are , and , than other parts of the city.Oksana Mironova, a policy analyst at the anti-poverty research and advocacy group Community Service Society, noted that the StreetEasy data is limited.&nbsp;That’s because it’s based on market-rate listings and does not include many types of housing such as illegally subdivided apartments, any unit rented by word of mouth, and subsidized apartments, including public housing.But the report does confirm what Mironova said she has suspected for some time: Those who had few housing options before the pandemic are under even more pressure now.“If you have a bad living situation, if you have an abusive landlord … you end up having to put up with negative living conditions. And I think all of that is probably getting amplified under COVID,” she said.At the same time, higher-income people have more choice within the market, including “the option to leave,” she added.In the wealthier parts of the city, residents seem to be exercising that option.&nbsp; from real estate giant Douglas Elliman found the Manhattan vacancy rate had climbed to over 5% as of August, a first in the real estate company’s report. The median rental price in the borough dropped 3.9% since August 2019.Williams of ANHD, however, warned against using Manhattan trends as a stand-in for the housing story in the rest of the city. To do so ensures people elsewhere are “rendered invisible,” she said.“When you see this narrative of everybody is leaving the city, and rents are dropping … and you live in a community where people aren’t leaving, people are trying to figure out how to make things work day to day, where there’s very little affordable housing and you don’t have a whole lot of options to go anywhere else if you wanted to — it’s incredibly frustrating,” she said.“What we’re perpetuating is this narrative of what is happening in predominantly white, wealthy neighborhoods is the story of New York,” she added. “And that’s just not true.”There was an error. Please try again later.Get THE CITY ScoopSign up and get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morningThank you for your submission!Next Up InThere was an error. Please try again later.Get THE CITY ScoopSign up and get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morningThank you for your submission!In case you missed itThe LatestManhattan lawyer alleges state has been shielding role played by property owner Vornado, which has valuable holdings affected by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Midtown development plan.The mayor and major city unions plan to press the City Council to clear a path for a privatized Medicare plan for retired city workers.Mayor Eric Adams maintains that results showing arsenic in the drinking water at Manhattan’s Riis houses were “questionable” — while not revealing that new clean results come from taps that had been flowing for an extended time first.Beyond the typical excitement among families and educators lurked a more somber reality: a majority of the city’s schools were starting the year with budget cuts.A surcharge added to every yellow or green cab ride could rise from 30 cents to $1 in a new effort to meet a long-blown accessibility deadline.There was an error. Please try again later.Get THE CITY ScoopSign up and get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morningThank you for your submission!

SHAREeasIn some parts of the city, rents have dropped since the COVID-19 crisis began. But for neighborhoods that felt the effects of the coronavirus most, listed prices have risen slightly, according to a new analysis.The annual by the apartment-listings site StreetEasy paints a very different price picture between the neighborhoods with the lowest coronavirus infection rates — primarily wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn — and the hardest-hit areas, mostly in Queens and The Bronx.Between February and July of this year, rents fell by 1.9% in the zip codes with the lowest...

What Rent Drop? Listed Prices Aren’t Budging Where COVID-19 Hit Hardest

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS