NYC Housing is Nearly Three Times as Crowded as National Average: Study
(DNAINFO) Nicole Levy — Feeling a little cramped in your apartment? You’re not alone.
Nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers lived in 272,533 crowded dwellings in 2013, according to a study released Monday by city comptroller Scott Stringer.
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development defines a housing unit as “crowded” when it’s occupied by more people than the number of rooms it contains.
Crowding can be viewed as a health, safety, wellbeing and financial issue for occupants, experts say. It’s linked to the spread of infectious disease, mental distress, an increased number of injuries and fatalities suffered in fires, poor academic performance and behavioral problems among kids, and homelessness.
The percentage of crowded rental and owned housing units in New York City grew from 7.6 percent in 2005 to 8.8 percent in 2013, data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey shows. Nationwide in 2013, the crowding rate stood at a mere 3.3 percent.