State of NYC Housing 2026

Executive Summary

DwellCheck analyzed 54 NYC Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs) using NYPD Complaint Data Historic (dataset qgea-i56i) and 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), both hosted on NYC Open Data. Every metric is reported as density per walking radius, not raw count, so that large and small neighborhoods are directly comparable. The citywide picture that emerges is one of extraordinary block-level variation inside a relatively compact city.

• 1.Riverdale-Spuyten Duyvil (Bronx) ranks as the single safest neighborhood in the city, averaging just 6 crimes per 300-meter walking radius — roughly 3.3× below the citywide average of 19.8.
• 2.Hunts Point generates the highest density of 311 noise complaints of any NTA in the city, at 20 complaints per 100-meter radius — about 1.9× the citywide average.
• 3.Hunts Point registers the highest rodent-sighting density in the dataset at 18 reports per 150-meter radius — roughly 2.6× the citywide average of 6.9.
• 4.Staten Island is the safest borough by crime density (100 crimes/300m), while Manhattan is the highest (280 crimes/300m).
• 5.Manhattan leads the city in noise-complaint density (12 per 100m), consistent with its density and mix of residential and commercial zoning.
• 6.Bronx records the highest rodent-sighting density (10 reports per 150m), underscoring the concentration of food, aging infrastructure and refuse handling in dense corridors.
• 7.On the other end of the spectrum, Tribeca-Civic Center is the quietest residential NTA in the dataset, averaging only 3 noise complaints per 100-meter radius.

Methodology

This report draws on three NYC Open Data sources: NYPD Complaint Data Historic (qgea-i56i), NYPD Shooting Incident Data (833y-fsy8) and the 311 Service Requests dataset (erm2-nwe9). Incident-level records from each source were spatially joined to the 2020 NYC Department of City Planning Neighborhood Tabulation Area (NTA) boundaries, producing per-NTA baselines for 54 distinct neighborhood polygons across all five boroughs.

Rather than reporting raw counts — which systematically penalize large neighborhoods such as Astoria or Bedford-Stuyvesant — DwellCheck normalizes every indicator to a walking-radius density. Crimes and arrests are reported per 300-meter radius, shootings per 500 meters, and 311 noise, rodent and sanitation complaints per 100 to 150 meters. These radii approximate one to three NYC blocks of pedestrian travel and are the same densities DwellCheck uses to score individual addresses through its livability API.

NYPD complaint data used in this edition is current through January 2025; 311-derived nuisance baselines are current through January 2026. Rankings in this report exclude NTAs with zero sample size (primarily park and airport polygons) to prevent trivially empty areas from distorting the top of any list.

Finding 1 — Citywide at a Glance

Across all 54 analyzed NTAs, the average New York City neighborhood sees 19.8 reported crimes per 300-meter radius, 1.1 shooting incidents per 500-meter radius and 10.3 311 noise complaints per 100-meter radius. These citywide means serve as the denominator for every comparison that follows.

Safety data as of January 2025. Nuisance (311) data as of January 2026. All values computed by DwellCheck across 54 NTAs.

Finding 2 — The Ten Safest Neighborhoods

Ranked strictly by reported-crime density per 300-meter walking radius, the following ten NTAs are the safest in New York City as of January 2025. DwellCheck treats the 300-meter radius as the functional “around-the-corner” zone for a resident — slightly larger than one NYC block — which is why crime density at this scale correlates better with lived safety than precinct-level statistics.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of NYPD Complaint Data Historic (qgea-i56i), NYC Open Data.

Finding 3 — The Ten Noisiest Neighborhoods

Noise complaints are the single most common 311 request type in New York City, and the geography of noise follows entertainment corridors, transit crossings and contested nightlife zones. Density — rather than raw volume — is the appropriate metric, so the table below normalizes 311 noise complaints to a 100-meter radius, roughly half a long avenue block.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data.

Finding 4 — The Ten Rattiest Neighborhoods

Rodent sightings have risen nearly every year since the 311 system became the default reporting channel, a pattern that reflects both actual rodent pressure and the city’s growing willingness to file reports. The ten NTAs below lead the city in rodent-sighting density per 150-meter radius — a scale that corresponds to a single block-and-a-half walk in any direction from a resident’s front door.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 rodent reports (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data. Data reflects reports filed, not confirmed infestations.

Finding 5 — The Ten Quietest Residential Neighborhoods

Quiet is not merely the absence of complaints; NTAs with zero sample size (largely parks and airports) are excluded, leaving only neighborhoods with real residential activity. The result is a list dominated by low-rise residential tracts, particularly at the outer edges of Queens, Staten Island and the northwest Bronx.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data. Excludes NTAs with zero complaint sample.

Finding 6 — Borough-Level Comparison

Aggregating every NTA up to the borough level produces the headline numbers most commonly cited in the press. Here they are all in one place, computed on the same walking-radius basis as the neighborhood tables above.

Sources: NYPD Complaint Data Historic (qgea-i56i), NYPD Shooting Incident Data (833y-fsy8), 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9). Borough-level values are population-weighted NTA averages.

Notable Patterns

Three editorial observations emerge when the six findings above are read against one another. The first is that the gap between the quietest and loudest neighborhoods in the city — roughly 1.9× on a per-100-meter basis — is substantially wider than the gap between the safest and most crime-dense neighborhoods. Put plainly, New York’s noise inequality is more pronounced than its crime inequality, and it is geographically concentrated along a relatively small set of entertainment corridors.

The second pattern is that the intersection of the noisiest and the rattiest tables is not nearly as large as NYC folklore would suggest. Rodent density tracks food-service corridors, public refuse points and alleys; noise tracks nightlife and through-traffic. Neighborhoods that appear on both lists tend to be mixed-use commercial cores, but several heavy-noise tracts register only average rodent numbers, and several heavy-rodent tracts are relatively quiet. Reporters and policymakers who treat “quality of life” as a single variable will miss this distinction.

The third pattern concerns the Top 10 safest list, which is populated almost entirely by low-density residential NTAs on the city’s periphery — Bronx dominates the upper ranks — while the most crime-dense NTAs cluster in mixed commercial/transit hubs near the urban core. Density does not cause crime, but the data shows that low-density, residentially-zoned census tracts are a reliable predictor of low incident counts, even after normalization. DwellCheck expects this finding to matter for the ongoing City of Yes rezoning debate: higher-density rezonings can be expected to modestly raise normalized crime density, and policy discussions should reckon with that trade-off honestly rather than deny it.

Limitations

Every indicator in this report reflects reported activity, not ground-truth activity. 311 is a self-report channel, so neighborhoods with higher civic engagement, stronger tenant-association networks, or simply more retirees at home during business hours will generate more complaints even at identical underlying activity. NYPD complaint data has a comparable reporting bias: crimes that go unreported are, by definition, absent. Data also lags real events by one to four weeks depending on the dataset, and the NTA polygon boundaries the report uses do not match the colloquial neighborhood lines New Yorkers mean when they talk about “Bushwick” or “Washington Heights.” Finally, small-sample NTAs have been excluded from rankings to avoid single-incident outliers, which means a handful of legitimately tiny residential pockets do not appear in the tables. Readers should treat DwellCheck rankings as relative indicators suitable for comparison and triage, not as absolute judgments of any one neighborhood.

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