State of NYC Housing 2026

Executive Summary

DwellCheck analyzed 197 NYC Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs) using NYPD crime complaints (datasets 5uac-w243 and qgea-i56i), NYPD shootings (5ucz-vwe8), NYPD arrests (uip8-fykc and 8h9b-rp9u) and 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), all hosted on NYC Open Data. Every metric is a count within a fixed walking radius of 100 random points in each neighborhood, not a neighborhood total, so that large and small neighborhoods are directly comparable. For every indicator, most of the variation between those points lies within boroughs rather than between them.

• 1.Annadale-Huguenot-Prince's Bay-Woodrow (Staten Island) has the fewest reported crimes of any residential NTA: an average of just 13.8 within 300 meters of a sampled point over the 12 months to June 30, 2026. The citywide average, 350.4, is 25.4× that.
• 2.Fordham Heights (Bronx) has the most 311 noise complaints of any residential NTA: the typical (median) spot of 100 sampled there had 187 within 100 meters from March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026, 23.4× the citywide median of 8.
• 3.Harlem (South) (Manhattan) has the most 311 rodent complaints: the typical sampled spot had 11 within 150 meters from March 17, 2026 to September 13, 2026, 11× the citywide median of 1.
• 4.Staten Island is the safest borough by crime density (75.6 crimes/300m), while Manhattan is the highest (696.5 crimes/300m).
• 5.Bronx has the highest mean noise-complaint count of the five boroughs: 56.3 within 100 meters of its sampled points.
• 6.Manhattan has the highest mean rodent-complaint count: 4.6 within 150 meters of its sampled points.
• 7.On the other end of the spectrum, Todt Hill-Emerson Hill-Lighthouse Hill-Manor Heights (Staten Island), Annadale-Huguenot-Prince's Bay-Woodrow (Staten Island) and Tottenville-Charleston (Staten Island) tie for the fewest noise complaints of any residential NTA: the typical sampled spot had 0 within 100 meters, and the mean across all 100 spots was 0.8.

Methodology

This report draws on six NYC Open Data datasets: NYPD Complaint Data Current (5uac-w243) and Historic (qgea-i56i), combined and counted once per complaint; NYPD Shootings (5ucz-vwe8); NYPD Arrest Data Year to Date (uip8-fykc) and Historic (8h9b-rp9u), combined and counted once per arrest; and 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9). NTA boundaries come from the 2020 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas dataset (9nt8-h7nd). For each of the 197 residential 2020 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs) — parks, airports and other non-residential NTAs are not included — DwellCheck placed 100 random points inside the NTA boundary and counted the incidents near each point.

Rather than reporting neighborhood totals — which grow with a neighborhood’s size — every indicator is a count within a fixed radius of a point: crimes and arrests within 300 meters, shootings within 500 meters, noise and trash complaints within 100 meters, and rodent complaints within 150 meters. These are the radii DwellCheck uses to score an individual address. Neighborhood safety figures are the mean over the 100 points. Neighborhood noise and rodent rankings use the median point, because one heavily reported building inside a 100-meter circle can move a neighborhood’s mean by dozens of complaints; the mean is shown alongside it. Borough and citywide figures pool every point in them.

Each NYPD indicator covers the 12 months ending on the latest date NYPD had published when the data was pulled on September 14, 2026: crime complaints through June 30, 2026 (558,339 mapped complaints citywide), shootings through June 30, 2026 (672 mapped incidents) and arrests through June 30, 2026 (277,322 mapped arrests). 311 noise and trash complaints cover March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026 and rodent complaints March 17, 2026 to September 13, 2026, pulled September 14, 2026. These figures are recomputed by script, not updated automatically.

Finding 1 — Citywide at a Glance

Across all 197 analyzed NTAs, the average New York City neighborhood saw 350.4 reported crimes per 300-meter radius and 1.2 shooting incidents per 500-meter radius over the 12 months to June 30, 2026, and 30.6 311 noise complaints within 100 meters of a sampled point from March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026. The 311 means sit well above the typical point: the citywide median is 8 for noise, 1 for rodents and 2 for trash complaints, because a minority of heavily reported blocks pulls the mean up. The safest table below compares with the citywide mean; the noise and rodent tables compare each neighborhood’s median with the citywide median.

NYPD data: the 12 months to June 30, 2026. Nuisance (311) data through September 13, 2026. Means over every sampled point in 197 residential NTAs (100 points each). “Trash” is 311 Missed Collection and Dirty Condition complaints.

Finding 2 — The Ten Safest Neighborhoods

Ranked by the mean number of reported crimes within 300 meters of their 100 sampled points over the 12 months to June 30, 2026, the following ten NTAs have the fewest in New York City. 300 meters is the radius DwellCheck uses to count crime around an individual address. These are reported crimes, not rates per resident.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of NYPD Complaint Data Current (5uac-w243) and Historic (qgea-i56i), NYC Open Data, 12 months to June 30, 2026.

Finding 3 — The Ten Noisiest Neighborhoods

In the 12 months to September 13, 2026, “Noise – Residential” was the second most common 311 complaint type in New York City, after Illegal Parking. The table below ranks residential NTAs by the median of their 100 sampled points: the number of 311 noise complaints within 100 meters of the typical spot from March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026. The mean is shown for comparison.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data. Citywide median: 8 noise complaints within 100m of a sampled point.

Finding 4 — The Ten Rattiest Neighborhoods

311 rodent complaints citywide rose each year from 2020 to 2023 (27,583 to 41,748) and fell in 2024 and 2025 (31,312), counts that reflect both rodent activity and residents’ willingness to file reports. The ten NTAs below have the highest median number of rodent complaints within 150 meters of their 100 sampled points from March 17, 2026 to September 13, 2026.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 rodent complaints (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data. Citywide median: 1 within 150m of a sampled point. Data reflects reports filed, not confirmed infestations.

Finding 5 — The Ten Quietest Residential Neighborhoods

Only residential NTAs are ranked; parks, airports and other non-residential NTAs were never sampled. 18 of the 197 have a median of 0: at their typical sampled spot, no noise complaint was filed within 100 meters. The ten below have the lowest medians, with ties ordered by the mean: 6 are in Staten Island and 4 are in Queens.

Source: DwellCheck analysis of 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), NYC Open Data, March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026. Citywide median: 8; citywide mean: 30.6.

Finding 6 — Borough-Level Comparison

Pooling every sampled point in each borough gives the borough figures below, computed on the same walking-radius basis as the neighborhood tables above.

Sources: NYPD Complaint Data Current and Historic (5uac-w243, qgea-i56i) and NYPD Shootings (5ucz-vwe8), 12 months to June 30, 2026; 311 Service Requests (erm2-nwe9), March 13, 2026 to September 13, 2026 (rodents from March 17, 2026). Borough values are means over every sampled point in the borough’s residential NTAs (100 per NTA), so each NTA counts equally regardless of population.

Notable Patterns

Three editorial observations emerge when the six findings above are read against one another. The first is that noise complaints are concentrated. The typical sampled spot in Fordham Heights had 187 noise complaints within 100 meters, against a citywide median of 8, while 18 residential NTAs had a median of 0. Of the ten neighborhoods with the most, 5 are in the Bronx, 4 are in Manhattan and 1 is in Brooklyn.

The second pattern concerns how far the noisiest and the rattiest tables overlap: 2 of the ten appear on both (Harlem (South) and Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill). Noise and rodent complaints measure different things, so a neighborhood can rank high on one and not the other.

The third pattern concerns where reported crime sits. Of the ten NTAs with the fewest reported crimes per 300 meters, 7 are in Staten Island and 3 are in Queens. Of the ten with the most, 5 are in Manhattan, 4 are in the Bronx and 1 is in Brooklyn, led by Midtown-Times Square (1526.4 per 300 meters). These are counts of reported incidents around sampled points, not rates per resident: this report uses no population, housing density or zoning data, so it cannot say how much of the gap reflects how many people live in, work in or pass through each area.

Limitations

Every indicator in this report reflects reported activity, not ground-truth activity. 311 is a self-report channel, so the same conditions can produce more complaints in one neighborhood than another, depending on who lives there and how willing they are to call 311. NYPD complaint data has a comparable reporting bias: crimes that go unreported are, by definition, absent. NYPD publishes with a lag of months (the crime window here ends June 30, 2026), while 311 data is usually published within days. 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.” Each neighborhood figure comes from 100 random points, so a different sample would give somewhat different numbers, and one heavily reported building near a point can raise a neighborhood’s mean; the noise and rodent rankings use the median for that reason. Parks, airports and other non-residential NTAs are not ranked. 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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