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Striking Change in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the White Population Soars


Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/ny...pagewanted=all

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Overshadowed by Harlem’s racial metamorphosis since 2000, an even more striking evolution has occurred in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Over all, the neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black — down from 75 percent a decade ago. But in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years. “Both the fall of the crime rate and the improvement of the subway were conditions that made this neighborhood more attractive to people who might not have considered living there in the past,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

- In the past decade, the black population of Bedford dropped to 34,000 from 40,000, or to 49 percent from 69 percent. Meanwhile, the number of whites grew to more than 18,000, up from just over 2,000, or to 26 percent, up from 4 percent. From 2000 to 2010, the white population soared 633 percent — the biggest percentage increase of any major racial or ethnic group in any New York City neighborhood. In Central Harlem, meanwhile, the number of whites rose 400 percent, increasing their share of the population to 10 percent, up from 2 percent.

- “In the 2010 census, the first thing we noticed was how the concentrations in many traditional black and white areas dropped off across so many blocks,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center, which analyzed the census results block by block. In Brooklyn, he said, “you can see how the white population, for example, is shifting eastward into traditionally black areas, while blacks are also moving eastward, especially to Flatlands and Canarsie.”

- “You’re getting new money, new people, you get different types of services and stores, and you get more police protection,” he said. “Homeowners are doing well, but if you’re a renter, those prices have gone up also and that has pushed some people into moving out. Michael Guerra, executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman and its Brooklyn sales director, said the neighborhood was attracting students from the nearby Pratt Institute, as well as “couples and singles who are looking for more value and a segment of pioneers who think there’s a long-term upside.”

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The intersection of Greene and Classon Avenues, above, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which is becoming increasingly white.