LIC Neighborhood Income

Over 14 Years, Incomes Here Rose Sharply. Adjusted for Inflation, the Story Depends on Where You Live.

Nominal household income grew across all parts of Hunters Point South and Long Island City since 2010. In real terms, only Court Square residents saw substantial gains in purchasing power.

One of the biggest questions we received to our education deep dive was about household income.

We’re a neighborhood of at least three districts: the waterfront, the HPS Core, and Court Square (read more). Household income had grown at different rates in different parts of our neighborhood. Median household income in Hunters Point South and Long Island City has grown across every zone since 2010. In Court Square, it went from $74,000 to $192,000. In Core Hunters Point, from $59,000 to $135,000. On the Waterfront, from $118,000 to $174,000. All three sit well above the Queens median of $86,000 and the city median of $80,000.

Those are nominal figures, the raw dollars reported each year, unadjusted for what those dollars actually bought.

Adjust for inflation, and the picture changes.

Measured in 2024 dollars, Court Square’s real income grew 81% over 14 years — from $106,000 to $192,000. Core Hunters Point grew 58% in real terms — from $85,000 to $135,000. Both represent genuine gains in purchasing power, well above Queens (8% real growth) and New York City (11% real growth).

The Waterfront and Core HPS tells a different story. In real 2024 dollars, median household income in the Waterfront went from $169,000 in 2010 to $174,000 in 2024 — a 3% gain over 14 years. Households in the Queens West towers and the newer Hunters Point South buildings have, on average, barely kept pace with inflation. In Core Hunters Point, it was even less gains.

Court Square’s surge is real and recent.

Court Square’s income growth is concentrated in the last decade, as new towers filled with high-earning tenants. In 2010, Court Square’s median income of $74,000 was close to the Queens median of $55,000 — the tract was barely residential, with a small worker population in industrial and older commercial buildings. By 2024 it had reached $192,000, led by Tract 19.01 at $232,000.

Within Court Square, the variation is narrower than the Waterfront: Tracts 19.02 and 19.03 sit at $171,000 and $173,000, compared to 19.01’s $232,000. The newer towers have pulled all three tracts upward together.

What’s Happening?

We don’t fully know, we have some hunches, but the data required to prove the hunches is hard to get.

ACS median household income doesn’t track the same households over time. It’s a snapshot of whoever lives there in a given year. So when the zone average stagnates, it could mean existing residents aren’t earning more, or it could mean higher earners are leaving and being replaced by similar earners, or both. We would need to use more precise data such as IRS tax records matched to addresses to track income mobility at the neighborhood level.

The Waterfront zone’s real income stagnation almost certainly reflects who moved in and when, not existing residents earning more. The Queens West towers were built in the 1990s and early 2000s and filled with a certain income cohort. Those residents have largely stayed: long-term renters with stable but not dramatically growing incomes. The newer HPS South buildings brought in a higher-earning cohort, but they’re possibly pulling the zone average up from outside, not lifting the existing residents.

Why Court Square grew faster in real terms.

Court Square was essentially empty in 2010, the first towers were just opening. Every year from 2010 to 2020, new high-earning residents moved into brand new units. The income figure wasn’t tracking an existing population getting richer. It was tracking a rapidly changing population composition as a new neighborhood filled up with a specific demographic as it shifted from industrial to residential.

That’s a selection effect, not income growth.

Why Core HPS shows real gains despite older stock.

Core HPS has pre-war walkups that, under normal circumstances, would house longer-term, lower-income residents. The 58% real gain suggests something different is happening: either longtime residents genuinely earned more, or turnover brought in higher earners over time, or both. Given the broader neighborhood context — the 7 train, proximity to Court Square, rising rents — it’s likely that as units turned over, new residents had higher incomes than departing ones. Gradual income increase through turnover rather than new construction.

The education and income data tell a consistent story across the neighborhood. In almost every year since 2012, the zone with the highest share of college-educated residents also had the highest median household income. Court Square leads on both measures. Core Hunters Point trails on both. The Waterfront sits in the middle. The pattern holds year after year, suggesting the two aren’t moving in parallel by coincidence — where education is higher, incomes tend to be higher too, and by similar margins.¹

NOTE:

¹ To test whether the education-income relationship was real or simply two trends rising together over time, we ran a cross-sectional correlation for each year from 2012 to 2024 — asking whether the zone with the highest education rate in a given year also had the highest income that year, independently of the trend. The correlation between college attainment and median household income was above 0.7 in ten of thirteen years, and above 0.9 in five of them. The consistency across years suggests the relationship reflects something structural about who lives in each zone, not just parallel growth. With only three zones per year the sample is small; the finding is suggestive rather than definitive.

Data

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2010–2024. Median household income (B19013). Waterfront = Tracts 1.01–1.02; Core Hunters Point = Tracts 7.01–7.02; Court Square = Tracts 19.01–19.03. Figures for 2010–2019 use 2010 census tract boundaries (tracts 1, 7, 19 undivided); 2020–2024 use 2020 sub-tract boundaries. Queens and NYC from borough-level and place-level ACS estimates. Inflation adjustment uses CPI-U annual averages (BLS series CUUR0000SA0), rebased to 2024.