While home prices are soaring in Upper Manhattan, the city’s most desirable neighborhoods, such as Manhattan’s Upper East Side, are the next logical hotspots for potential buyers.
Mott Haven is one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, and more than 40% of residents live below the poverty line, according to statistics from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The rundown housing project, with a population of just over 2,000, is in the worst – in the rural low-income neighborhood of New York City. According to the latest census data, an estimated 29 percent of New Yorkers under 25 live in poverty, compared with a statewide average of 22.5 percent in the same age group. The number of residents struggling to pay their rent is 58%, compared to the national rate of 27.2% for those under 25, the highest of any city in America.
In 2015, the median price in Mott Haven was $1,750, compared with $1,500 in the Bronx as a whole, according to the New York Department of Housing and Urban Development. StreetEasy noted that sales data for Motts Haven were not specifically available, but the median sales price for the Bronx as a whole was $339,500 in 2015.
The median sale price for the Bronx as a whole was $491 K in 2015, a 5% decrease from the previous year, according to the New York Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A report by the rental website Zumper lists four neighborhoods in the Bronx as the top 10 most expensive residential neighborhoods in New York City. Again, most of this new wave of housing appears to be in Manhattan, with the exception of a handful of upscale neighborhoods like the Upper East Side. In Bronx Bricks, where the sale began in 2007, there were a number of well-known condos, but none with a median sale price of more than $1.5 million.
In Manhattan, brokers believe Mott Haven has a lot of potential, and given its proximity and views, it’s a great place to live, work or vacation in New York City. The neighborhood is close enough to the subway to be served by the 2, 4, 5 and 6 trains, but not so close that it could be dangerous. I just wish I had a barbecue in the neighborhood, which is only a 20-minute drive from Midtown. But for beer lovers, MOTT Haven offers a base for beer lovers, starting with a bar on the corner of East 44th Street and East 46th Avenue, just a few blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge.
The current median income in Mott Haven is $19,400 for a family of four, but there are only two units available that would serve the typical family living there. The 557 units will be located on Community Board 1 (which includes both MOTT Haven and Melrose) and if these units are phased out they risk falling below market interest rates. This makes it a place where 97% of the population is Hispanic or black and where some particularly insidious pollution and inequalities are involved.
In 2018, premature births and teen births were more common in Mott Haven and Melrose than in any other place in the city, and the Bronx has long struggled with high rates of HIV / AIDS and coronavirus – infecting children and young adults. In 2018, 46 percent of the district lived below the federal poverty line, more than twice as many as the rest of New York City, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. MOTT Haven has the highest percentage of adults without high school in the city, with an average age of 35 and a median household income of $35,000. That’s more for those who live just across the river from Manhattan, but still higher than the national average for the same age group.
Mott Haven in the South Bronx is world famous, but it’s a boring story, with people finding homes here, people being displaced here and losing good jobs, and people getting brand new homes in projects and worrying about the safety of their children. Others, however, know it, they don’t care how they don’t know it, or care about East New York or Flatbush. They value MOTT Haven because they know and like it in a way.
Mott Haven began to flourish as an industrial center after the New York and Harlem Railroad connected the southeastern Bronx with Manhattan in the 1840s and Mott built his canal in 1850. It is surprising that she was not as well known as the six Piccirilli brothers who were in business from 1893 to 1945. MOTT Haven has earned a reputation as the piano production capital of New York City due to its proximity to the Steinways (just across the East River in Astoria).
The transit link made Mott Haven a convenient location that attracted middle-class families looking to buy single-family homes. When German and Irish residents moved to the MOTT Haven neighborhood, the brownfield and tenement became home to many black and Hispanic families.