In Queens, Astoria Has One of the Highest Poverty Rates For Children

Hallets Point peninsula in Astoria—the area south of 26th Avenue is home to a 55% child poverty rate. It is, of course, also the potential future home to Astoria Cove.

This is a story we definitely do not heart but believe it is an important one to know about. In a recent Capital New York article, we learned the grim statistics about child poverty in NYC:

Almost 30 percent of children in New York City live in poverty, according to data released by the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. There are more than 1.7 million children living in the city and more than 500,000 of them live below the poverty line, the data shows.

In all the 5 boroughs, the highest rate of child poverty is in the East Tremont neighborhood in the west Bronx. But in Queens, the highest rates are in Jamaica, Far Rockaway and… Astoria. It’s hard to believe that in a neighborhood that has been so solidly middle class for years, some of the highest rates of child poverty are right here. You can check out this map to see which areas of Astoria have higher and lower percentages of child poverty. So what to do about this? Here are some ideas from the article:

But Citizens’ Committee for Children believes this presents an opportunity and if you raise incomes and reduce poverty you can address other risk factors and have better outcomes. “Research has shown that ensuring that children and families have access to services such as early childhood education, primary health care, food supports including food stamps and school meals, and housing subsidies make a difference in lifting them out of poverty,” [Jennifer] March, [executive director of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York] said.

What do you think? Do you agree with these ideas? What are your solutions for crushing the levels of child poverty in Astoria? Leave us a comment or a tweet with your thoughts.

Capital Data: Child poverty in New York City [Capital New York]

2 Comments

alia October 27th, 2014

Astoria Houses is right there– the new Astoria Cove project plans on extending a street (that currently dead ends) which will cut the subsidized housing development in two.

Again, the new project claims they will add a 500 seat elementary school. However, in the next sentence it says, “If FOR ANY REASON we don’t, we will replace that space with residential units.” The closest elementary schools are PS17 (not very close) and PS122 (even further), so if the kids can make it to school and have their paperwork filled out they can get lunch, but there are a lot of ifs there.

Meantime, Aastoria Houses keeps getting their funding cut– 2 years(?) ago they lost funding for their community center.

Just wanted to add this info.

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Brian October 21st, 2014

Not sure the solutions presented will help much. I’m sure they have public housing and school lunched taken care of in that neighborhood. Seems the city’s solution is to just skew the numbers by bringing in rich families right next door.

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