How Far is Your NYC Neighborhood from Economic Opportunity?

In a city of well over 8 million people, it’s likely you could find someone who doesn’t think the local government needs to worry about creating affordable housing. The most intense local debate, however, is among people who all agree that protecting and building affordable housing is a primary duty of the mayor and Council, but clash strongly over whether it’s more important to build a lot of housing for a range of income groups or focus public resources on the more pressing and more expensive task of building for families with the fewest options and resources.

It’s an argument about principles and priorities. But it reflects a basic mathematical truth: There are limits to what the city can do to close the gap between the cost of housing and what people can afford. In the end, it will take more than housing programs to narrow that gap enough to create a city where people at the lower end of the income ladder have a real foothold.

No surprise: Economic opportunity differs by neighborhood. But the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) is out with its annual assessment of just how the degree of opportunity, and its contours, differ from the top of the Bronx to Tottenville. The ranking looks not just at housing pressures like the share of households considered rent-burdened but also at factors like incarceration, commuting time and Internet access.

As was the case last year, residents in three Bronx neighborhoods—Highbridge, Fordham and Mott Haven—face the largest challenges of any community district in the city.

The higher the number below, the more challenges to opportunity ANHD found in each neighborhood. Read the full chart here and ANHD’s analysis here, and check out the 2015 report for comparison.