I moved to Astoria almost seven years ago. The reason why I live here is because I feel close to my second home, which is Greece. It is still a Greek-populated neighborhood, and I can find many Greek products or order a coffee in my first language. Some of the unique things about Astoria are that the crime rate is low, there is a great park perfect for summer, and many different kinds of restaurants and ways to have fun.
However, unfortunately, these past three years, I am thinking of moving and relocating to a different neighborhood because the rent in Astoria has gone way up. Real median gross rent in Astoria increased from $1,350 in 2006 to $1,870 in 2019. In 2019, 21.7% of renter households in Astoria were severely rent burdened (spent more than 50% of household income on rent). 31.7% of the rental units were affordable at 80% Area Median Income, 3 percentage points lower than the share in 2010. 10.0% of rental units were public housing rental units, as of 2021. The overall rental vacancy rate in Astoria was 1.8% in 2019.
Source: Astoria neighborhood profile. NYU Furman Center. (n.d.). https://furmancenter.org/neighborhoods/view/astoria
If I had to choose another area to move into, that would be Howard Beach because it is very quiet, it is full of green, and away from the city, where you can find some affordable housing.
In 2019, there were an estimated 166,069 people in Astoria, of which 14.7% of the population identified as Asian, 5.2% identified as Black, 27.4% identified as Hispanic, and 49.5% identified as White.
Source: Astoria neighborhood profile. NYU Furman Center. (n.d.). https://furmancenter.org/neighborhoods/view/astoria
As we can see in the crime statistics below, Astoria does not have a great number of crimes per year compared to other neighborhoods.
Source: Crime statistics – city of New York. (n.d.-b). https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-114pct.pdf
