In the South Fordham section of the Bronx, residents give their neighborhood a Bronx cheer. In Park Slope in Brooklyn — known and parodied for its self-consciously liberal politics and wealth — residents are much happier.
But if there’s one thing that New Yorkers can agree upon, it’s that the quality of life in New York City has suffered.
Only half of New Yorkers plan to stay in the city, according to the survey of more than 6,600 New York City households conducted in the second half of 2023 by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission — a follow-up to similar studies in 2017 and 2008.
Only 39 percent are content with the state of public education. Only 37 percent are happy with the level of public safety in their neighborhood, and only 34 percent are satisfied with their neighborhood’s cleanliness. Less than a third rate the city’s quality of life as excellent or good. Less than a quarter are content with the overall quality of government services.
And in nearly every category, New Yorkers felt worse about the city in 2023 than they did in 2017 and 2008.
How would you rate the quality of life in New York City overall?
2023: 29.8 percent of New Yorkers rated the quality of life in New York City as “excellent” or “good”
2017: 51.2 percent of New Yorkers rated the quality of life in New York City as “excellent” or “good”
2008: 50.9 percent of New Yorkers rated the quality of life in New York City as “excellent” or “good”
“The drop is stark,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, even as he stressed that context matters. In 2017, New York City was “seven years into a really robust recovery,” he said. In 2023, New York City was still emerging from a pandemic that brought economic and social upheaval.
While New Yorkers largely agreed that quality of life in New York City was unimpressive, they diverged widely on how that manifested itself in their particular neighborhoods — an apparent reflection of neighborhood wealth.
Residents of Brooklyn’s Community Board 6, which includes Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Red Hook, were the city’s most content, with more than 38 percent describing their local quality of life as “excellent.” The nearby communities of Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene and Dumbo clocked in next, with 37.8 percent calling their neighborhoods “excellent,” followed by Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
“Gosh,” said Andrew Gounardes, a state senator whose district encompasses several of those Brooklyn neighborhoods. “I would guess that that’s due to a combination of factors, probably access to parks — whether it’s Prospect Park or the waterfront parks, green space, lots of strong schools, lots of vibrant nightlife and commercial corridors and restaurants and small businesses.”
In no other neighborhood did more than 30 percent rate of residents rate their neighborhood as highly.
On the flip side, 54 percent of residents in the Bronx’s Community Board 5, which encompasses South Fordham, ranked the quality of life in their neighborhood as “poor” — the worst ranking in New York City. The next two lowest-ranking community boards were also in the Bronx, including neighborhoods of Mott Haven, Melrose, Port Morris, Belmont and East Tremont.
Pierina Sanchez, the Bronx councilwoman whose district includes Community Board 5, said she was not surprised. “Our crime rates in the district, they’ve not been great, right?” she said.
“The perceptions of New York City going in the wrong direction are compounded with a district that has a harsher socioeconomic reality,” Ms. Sanchez said. “It’s facing generations of disinvestment.”
Fifty percent or less of New Yorkers rated positively 52 of 68 metrics, from overall quality of life in New York City and the quality of after-school programs and public housing, to ease of travel within the five boroughs, neighborhood cleanliness and rat control. They expressed more satisfaction with New York’s Fire Department, emergency medical services, libraries, neighborhood parks and garbage collection.
The survey was sent to a random sampling of nearly 126,000 households, 6,632 of which participated. The respondents included at least 90 households from each of New York City’s 59 community boards, and each board’s responses will be available on an interactive map on the commission’s website.
Sixty-two of the survey metrics were similar to topics in the 2017 survey. In 54 of those, residents expressed more dissatisfaction than in 2017, with the satisfaction level relatively unchanged in the other eight.
Of particular note were New Yorkers’ feelings about crime. There were more murders, robberies, felony assaults, burglaries and grand larcenies last year than in 2019, before the pandemic began, and the survey questions reflected a marked unease in how people felt riding the subway or walking the streets at night.
Please rate how safe or unsafe you feel … riding a subway during the day
2023: Only 49 percent of New Yorkers felt at least somewhat safe riding the subway during the day.
2017: 82 percent of New Yorkers
2008: 86 percent of New Yorkers
Please rate how safe or unsafe you feel … riding a subway at night
2023: Only 22 percent of New Yorkers feel at least somewhat safe riding the subway at night.
2017: 46 percent
2008: 45 percent
Please rate how safe or unsafe you feel … walking alone on a street in your neighborhood at night
2023: Only 51 percent of New Yorkers felt at least somewhat safe walking in their neighborhood at night.
2017: 70 percent of New Yorkers
2008: 69 percent of New Yorkers
Mayor Eric Adams, a retired police captain, ran for office in 2021 on an anti-crime platform, and the Citizens Budget Commission gave him credit for trying to target areas of concern to New Yorkers.
“We will continue to advance Mayor Adams’s bold plans to make the city safer, more prosperous, and more livable, and we look forward to working with our partners at the City Council, in Albany, and in Washington, D.C., to ensure the city continues to work for working-class New Yorkers,” said Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the mayor.
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