Census data shows 78.7 percent of occupied housing units in Hunters Point South and Long Island City’s residential core are renter-occupied, well above New York City’s rate and nearly 24 points above Queens as a whole. The gap has held steady for fifteen years.
Of the roughly 15,800 occupied housing units in the residential core of Hunters Point South and Long Island City, 78.7 percent are renter-occupied, according to 2024 Census Bureau estimates. Citywide, the rate is 67.2 percent. In Queens as a whole, it’s 55.1 percent, meaning a majority of the borough’s households own rather than rent, the opposite of what’s true here.
This isn’t new. Census data going back to 2010 shows the neighborhood’s renter share has moved within a narrow band, roughly 73 to 80 percent, for the entire fifteen-year period this series has tracked. Whatever else has changed here, and this series has documented a great deal, the neighborhood has been a renter-majority place for as long as reliable tract-level data exists.
The stability of this number is more notable than the number itself. Population here nearly quadrupled between 2010 and 2024. Housing units grew by more than 13,000. Nearly half of current residents moved in within just the last five years. Against that backdrop of rapid, continuous change, the renter share has stayed remarkably constant, dipping as low as 72.9 percent in 2014 and rising as high as 80.0 percent in 2020, but never approaching Queens’ roughly even split between owners and renters.
This is a household-based measure, counting occupied housing units directly, not a population-based one. Earlier analysis in this series found that 80.2 percent of residents live in renter-occupied units, a very similar but not identical figure, since renter-occupied units here tend to house fewer people on average than owner-occupied ones. Both measures point to the same conclusion, but they answer slightly different questions: one counts units, the other counts people. We use the household-based figure because it’s the standard basis for tenure statistics and it’s the number that matches how city and state housing data are typically reported.
HPS By the numbers
Randy Plemel
Publisher
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The founder and publisher of the Hunters Point Ledger, a newsletter covering Hunters Point South and Long Island City. He serves on Queens Community Board 2, and all views are his own.
