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NY Times, Nov. 18 2019
Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows
By ALEXANDER BURNS and GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Half of New York City residents say they are struggling economically,
making ends meet just barely, if at all, and most feel sharp uncertainty
about the future of the city’s next generation, a new poll shows.
The poll, conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, shows great
disparities in quality of life among the city’s five boroughs. The
stresses weighing on New Yorkers vary widely, from the Bronx, where
residents feel acute concern about access to jobs and educational
opportunity, to Staten Island, where one in five report recently
experiencing vandalism or theft.
But an atmosphere of economic anxiety pervades all areas of the city: 51
percent of New Yorkers said they were either just getting by or finding
it difficult to do so.
Even in Manhattan, three in 10 said they were just getting by.
(Fifty-eight percent said they were doing all right or thriving
financially — the highest response of the five boroughs.)
In some respects, the poll echoed the “tale of two cities” theme of
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign: Residents of the Bronx and
Brooklyn shared the most pronounced sense of economic insecurity, and
the lowest confidence in local government and the police — a distinctly
different experience from the rest of the city.
In those boroughs, nearly three in five residents said they were
straining to make ends meet. In the Bronx, 36 percent said there had
been times in the past year when they did not have the money to buy
enough food for their family; only one in five said they and their
neighbors had good or excellent access to suitable jobs.
But if the city appears divided into broad camps of haves and have-nots,
it was, perhaps surprisingly, the less privileged segments of New York
that shared the most positive outlook on the future.
Four in 10 Brooklyn residents said their neighborhood was getting
better, and 36 percent of Bronx residents said the same. Manhattanites
and Staten Islanders were most likely to say things were getting worse
in their area.
Almost two years into the term of a liberal mayor elected in a populist
landslide, the city’s poor and minorities, and the residents of the
Bronx and Brooklyn, describe lives fraught with more difficulty than
others. But they also express more optimism.
Matt Walker, 28, a resident of Flatbush, Brooklyn, said in a follow-up
interview that finding long-term employment was a challenge. Mr. Walker,
who is an engineer, said he had recently lost a “middle management-type
position” and was searching for stable work.
“I’ll probably find another job in a month or two, because of my field,
engineering,” Mr. Walker said. “A lot of people say it’s difficult to
find a steady job that pays enough and that you can hold on to. If
anything goes wrong with the company, you’re out the door.”
By almost every measure, residents of the Bronx had the deepest concerns
about their neighborhoods: Half of respondents there said it was likely
that a young person in the neighborhood would abuse drugs or alcohol.
Thirty-seven percent said it was likely that a young person in the
neighborhood would join a gang, whereas 19 percent of Manhattan
residents and 16 percent of Staten Island residents said the same.
Just six in 10 Bronx residents said it was likely that a young person in
their neighborhood would graduate from high school, compared with about
three-quarters of New Yorkers over all. Meanwhile, 44 percent of
respondents in the Bronx said it was probable that the children around
them would grow up having a relative who is incarcerated. (The citywide
number is lower, about one-third, but it rises to 52 percent among
African-Americans.)
Government is not seen as addressing the problems that trouble these
areas: In the Bronx, only one in five respondents gave local government
high marks for meeting their needs. In Brooklyn, that figure was a bit
higher, at 26 percent, compared with roughly a third in Manhattan,
Queens and Staten Island.
Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, said
residents of Manhattan and Queens, as well as whites in general, were
clearly more likely to say that they were doing all right or living
comfortably. “But a majority of residents of the Bronx or Brooklyn and
nearly three-quarters of those earning under $50,000 are either just
getting by or finding it difficult to manage financially,” Mr. Levy said.
The citywide survey of 1,961 adult New Yorkers was conducted by
telephone from Oct. 29 to Nov. 11, and has a margin of sampling error of
plus or minus three percentage points.
Camila Thomas, 20, who lives in the Bronx, said there were fewer
opportunities for young people to improve their lives there, “compared
to other neighborhoods.”
“I feel like people who were born in this neighborhood stay here our
whole lives,” Ms. Thomas said. “If it was true that we had opportunities
for advancement, then all of us wouldn’t still be here 20 years from now.”
Anthony Scruggs, who moved to the Bronx after Hurricane Sandy caused him
to leave his home in Queens, agreed. “In all reality these kids are
being taught to survive, and not to live,” Mr. Scruggs, 45, said. “It’s
not that they don’t have the mind-set, if they were afforded the
opportunities.”
Much of the city expressed a basically optimistic sense of the future: A
third of all New Yorkers said their neighborhood was improving, while
four in 10 said it was staying more or less the same. Just over a
quarter said things were getting worse where they live.
Only in Staten Island, where residents had a strongly favorable view of
their borough as a place to raise children, and expressed clear
confidence that their children would graduate from high school, did
participants in the poll share a distinctively negative outlook on the
future.
Forty-six percent of Staten Islanders said life in their borough was
getting worse, and just 19 percent said it was improving.
The reason for that pessimism may be crime: Heroin abuse there has risen
sharply, and, along with high reported rates of vandalism and theft,
about four in 10 Staten Islanders expect children in their neighborhoods
to fall victims to drug or alcohol abuse.
Despite the uncertainty of many respondents, New Yorkers’ pride in their
city remains: 65 percent said it was still the greatest in the world.
Marina Stefan contributed reporting.
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