BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — With rents rising and a slew of new businesses setting up shop, a wave of newcomers is bringing a shift in Bedford-Stuyvesant’s economic make-up.
Among the city’s top gentrifying neighborhoods, Bed-Stuy came in at number seven in a list ranking greatest change in average rent, according to a report released this week from NYU’s Furman Center.
From 1990 to 2014, average rent in the central Brooklyn locale rose 36.1 percent, the report found.
The analysis uses the term “gentrification” to describe a focus on “dramatic rent growth, which is the change that is of greatest concern in lower-income neighborhoods,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, faculty director of the NYU Furman Center.
Between 1990 and 2014, average household income in gentrifying neighborhoods rose by around 14 percent, according to the report, compared to an 8 percent decline in “non-gentrifying” neighborhoods.
"As demand grows and neighborhoods become more economically and racially integrated, long-time residents may benefit from new neighborhood amenities, reduced crime rates and higher housing values," Ellen said.
"However, rising rents threaten the long-run diversity of these communities.”
The NYU report coincides with a Washington Post analysis that labeled Bed-Stuy’s 11216 zip code as having the biggest gain in single-family home values among the 300 largest metro areas in the country.
Home values in the area have risen by 194 percent since 2004, with a median value of more than $1 million.
While New York City as a whole became more educated and had more single-person households and households with unrelated adults, such changes were more pronounced in gentrifying neighborhoods, the NYU report found.
In 2000, 10.6 percent of Bed-Stuy’s adult population had a college degree, a number that increased to 25.1 percent in 2010-2014.
Over the course of 20 years, the neighborhood also experienced a decrease in density of its black population, according to the report.
