About 8.8 million people live in New York City (NYC), which represents a density of roughly 45 people per acre. With twice the population of Los Angeles, NYC is by far the most populous and dense city in the United States.
Although all New Yorkers are potentially at risk from severe weather and other hazards, some groups are more vulnerable than others. Groups that are most vulnerable are young children, the elderly, people with disabilities and serious health conditions, people who are socially isolated, and households with limited English proficiency.
Demographics
According to the 2017–2021 American Community Survey (ACS) by the U.S. Census, about 8.8 million people are currently living in the city — an average of 45 people per acre. With approximately 114 people per acre, Manhattan is New York City’s most densely populated borough. Staten Island is the least densely populated borough, with approximately 13 people per acre.
Population Density by Census Tract
Age
In the past, New York City’s population was characterized by its high concentration of young adults. Today, it is characterized by population growth in two segments that are at higher risk from certain types of hazards — seniors and children.
Seniors
Seniors are one of New York City’s fastest-growing demographic groups. According to the 2017–2021 ACS, New York City’s senior population increased to 1.3 million in 2021 from 1.0 million in 2010, a 35 percent increase. Almost 49 percent of senior New Yorkers are foreign-born and approximately 29 percent live alone.
As a group, people aged 65 and older are at higher risks during and after an emergency if they have chronic health conditions or disabilities, are socially isolated, or have limited access to emergency services. As a group, people 65 and older generally depend more heavily on medical services at hospitals and nursing homes than other population segments. People 65 and older with limited mobility may require accessible transportation or assistance with basic tasks, like getting prescriptions refilled.
Power outages can be particularly dangerous for seniors who may use elevators to reach their apartments, need to keep medications refrigerated, or use oxygen tanks, motorized wheelchairs, or other power-dependent medical equipment. People aged 65 and older with mental health conditions, such as disorientation, anxiety, or depression, are at higher risk during and after a serious hazard event.
Population by Age – Percent age 65 and older
Children
Children are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters because they depend on parents and other adult caretakers for food, shelter, transportation, and guidance. The emotional stress that follows a natural disaster may linger longer in children than in adults, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) mental health experts.
New York City’s youth population is growing, according to the 2017–2021 ACS, with about 20.9 percent of New Yorkers under the age of 18, and 6.2 percent under five years old. Approximately 48 percent of all NYC households have children under the age of 18.
Children who are poor or have disabilities are at even greater risk. In New York City, approximately 29 percent of young people under the age of 18 live below the federal poverty level, and over 150,000 of these children are under the age of five. According to the 2017–2021 ACS, approximately 4 percent of NYC’s children under the age of 18 have some form of disability.
Population by Age – Percent age 5 and under
Income & Poverty
In 2023, the poverty threshold was set at $14,580 for a single-person household and at $30,000 for a four-person household. The U.S. Federal Poverty Guidelines does not adjust these poverty levels regionally. Because the cost of living here is higher than in many other parts of the United States, the census numbers may underestimate the number of people in New York City considered to be living under economic hardship.
According to the 2017–2021 ACS, approximately 17 percent of New York City’s population, or approximately 1.5 million people, live below the federal poverty line. Of this 1.5 million, approximately 29 percent are children under 18 years old. The greatest concentrations of low-income populations are in the South Bronx and Upper Manhattan, and in pockets scattered throughout Brooklyn.
Percent Below Poverty Level
Environmental Justice
New York City’s Environmental Justice (EJ) law defines Environmental Justice Areas as low-income or minority communities located within the city, in order to enable City agencies to explore environmental and climate issues from a foundation of social vulnerability.
Low-income communities and communities of color are the most vulnerable to a rapidly changing climate. Disparities that are persistent in our society–from social, to economic and health inequities–can be exacerbated by the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. For example, periods of extreme heat, winter storms, or floods can cause increases in utility and other costs that are not easily absorbed by low-income families and preexisting underlying health conditions can make weathering a heatwave a life-threatening situation.
An EJ Area is an area that has been and continues to be more vulnerable to environmental injustices and climate catastrophe due to a history of systemic racism and economic inequality. This history has led to disparities in wealth, income, and education; the disproportionate concentration of other environmental hazards in low-income communities (for example, the siting of polluting infrastructure); unequal access to healthcare; and other factors.1NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. EJNYC: A Study of Environmental Justice Issues in New York City, April 2024. https://climate.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/EJNYC_Report_FIN_20240424.pdf.
Social Vulnerability Index
Social vulnerability is the susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts of natural hazards, including disproportionate death, injury, loss, or disruption of livelihood.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to help public health officials and emergency response planners identify and map the communities that will most likely need support before, during, and after a hazardous event. The SVI uses 15 social factors under four themes — socioeconomic status; household composition and disability; minority status and language; and housing and transportation — to provide an overall vulnerability ranking by census tract. All data is from the 2014–2018 ACS conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and provided as a raw count, percentage of total population, and percentile rank.
Social Vulnerability Index
Language
New York has one of the most diverse populations of any major city in the United States. In 2021, New York City had the largest foreign-born population in the United States — 3.1 million, a historic high that represented 37 percent of the total city population that year. Queens (with 1.1 million) and Brooklyn (nearly 1 million) together account for two-thirds of all foreign-born residents.
Over 200 languages are spoken in New York City, and nearly half of all New Yorkers speak a language besides English at home. According to the 2017–2021 ACS, an estimated 22 percent of New Yorkers had limited English-speaking proficiency.
Limited English proficiency can put individuals at higher risk during an emergency because they might not be aware of or fully understand evacuation orders or other warnings, instructions on how to access critical City services, or other communication from first responders. The map indicates where New York City populations have limited English proficiency.
Linguistically Isolated Households
Populations with Disability, Access, and Functional Needs
The U.S. Census defines four major categories of disabilities:
- Sensory disabilitiesinclude blindness, deafness, or severe vision or hearing impairment.
- Physical disabilitiesare long-lasting conditions that substantially limit one or more basic physical activities, such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting, or carrying things.
- Self-care disabilities are conditions lasting six or more months that make it a challenge to dress, bathe, or move around inside the home.
- Go-outside-the-home disabilitiesare conditions lasting six or more months that make it difficult for people to shop or to visit a doctor’s office by themselves.
According to the 2017–2021 ACS, approximately 11 percent of New Yorkers have at least one disability, as defined by the above categories. Additionally, the percentage of New York City’s population considered disabled increases with age. According to the 2017–2021 ACS, almost 34 percent of New Yorkers aged 65 and older have at least one type of disability.
Approximately 8 percent of New York City’s people aged 65 and older with disabilities live within the 1 percent annual chance floodplain. The area commonly known as “100-year floodplain” — that has a 1 percent-or-greater chance of experiencing coastal or riverine flooding in any given year — exists in communities such as the Rockaways, Coney Island, and Brighton Beach. This does not include people aged 65 and older living in institutions such as nursing homes and adult care facilities. Some of the city’s hospitals, senior centers, nursing homes, and assisted-care facilities are also located within the floodplain as shown in the table titled Health Care Facilities Located in the 1 Percent Annual Chance Floodplain.
Economy
New York City is one of the global financial capitals of the world and serves as a center for national and regional economic activity. It is home to a wide range of industries and jobs — from finance and real estate, to high-tech and tourism, to manufacturing and the service sector. All of this activity generates millions of regional jobs.
New York City has the highest concentration of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 headquarters in the country. It is also home to the country’s top securities and law firms and international banks. This concentration creates jobs that attract highly skilled professionals from all corners of the United States and the world.
New York City also serves as a global center for the arts, fashion, media, technology, and information industries. Most major publishing houses and many TV and radio stations are located here. NYC has also been a favorite location for TV and film productions for decades — an activity that continues to grow. Established TV and film production studios are located in Manhattan and Queens, with new ones also emerging in other boroughs.
Tourism, another major industry in New York City, generated a record $43 billion in revenue in 2016 from approximately 60.5 million visitors, an all-time high. Since 2009, visitor spending in New York City has increased by more than 50 percent. Approximately 383,000 New Yorkers from all five boroughs are employed in the tourism sector.
According to the New York City Department of City Planning’s July 2018 report, Geography of Jobs, after the Great Recession, office employment has shifted away from the financial and insurance sectors and now reflects a more diverse mix of professional and technical services. The largest areas of growth were institutional (education and health care) and retail, followed by leisure and hospitality, and office-based employment. Within the office-based employment sector, the largest growth area was professional and technical. In the education and health care sector, the largest growth area was private ambulatory services, which includes local health care providers, such as physicians and dentists, and their staffs.
New York City’s economy is highly concentrated within the five boroughs, but relies heavily on the movement of people, goods, and information via critical infrastructure throughout the region. This centralized yet interdependent economy is potentially vulnerable to disruption by hazard events, such as if businesses close or transit service is suspended. Severe or sustained disruptions, moreover, could lead to cascading effects from loss of income or employment, and access to basic needs, like food or health care.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed such vulnerabilities, as stay-at-home orders, social distancing rules, and restrictions on businesses were put in place to curb the spread of the virus. Some industries easily transitioned to telework, while others could not, like those involving face-to-face interactions. By December, during the pandemic’s second wave, nearly 13 percent of City residents were unemployed, and roughly 2.2 million New Yorkers were collecting unemployment, many of whom previously worked in industries affected by mandatory business closures. In January 2021, the number of jobs in the arts, entertainment, and recreation industries had fallen more than 50 percent compared to 2019 levels. Workers in those industries — particularly people of color, immigrants, and young adults — experienced disproportional losses of jobs and wages, leading to disparities in unemployment claims, and housing and food security among New Yorkers.
Housing
Access to affordable housing can be a challenge in New York City, and disasters that result in property damage can further constrain the housing market. This may put pressure on the limited affordable supply and make recovery even harder. Further, some communities may already struggle with housing access due to historical discriminatory practices including mortgage lending processes known as redlining.
The impact of hazards has been a reason for many New Yorkers, like those of Staten Island’s Oakwood Beach, to leave their homes. However, in many areas of the city, families and communities have only been able to buy homes in areas that are exposed to increased risk of disaster impacts. New Yorkers already experience issues with housing access due to historic discriminatory practices.
Redlining
Redlining refers to a federal policy from the 1930s that refused insurance of home mortgages and improvement loans in “risky” neighborhoods, which often were predominantly communities of color. The term “redlining” originates from the color-coded maps drawn up by the federal government’s Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) to identify where banks should approve or deny mortgages based on potential financial risk.
To assess which loans to secure, the HOLC deployed appraisers to evaluate residential areas throughout the United States. These appraisers recorded details about the housing and demographics of neighborhoods. They also noted “detrimental influences,” using discriminatory language such as “infiltration of Negroes” and “mixed races,” which they considered factors that diminished the value of a neighborhood.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited redlining, but its effects had already been set in motion. Existing segregation worsened throughout the nation, and redlined neighborhoods endured cycles of disinvestment and declining home ownership for decades, leaving visible legacies, like more crowding, unsafe housing, and less green and open space. Environmental stressors, like poor housing conditions, can further increase a person’s risk to adverse effects of hazards events, including coastal storms, flooding, extreme heat, and pandemic influenza outbreaks.
The effects of redlining and discriminatory policies remain apparent. According to NYC Housing Preservation & Development’s report Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness, the ongoing housing crisis has made buying a home especially difficult for some buyers. The report discusses “first-time homebuyers who do not have generational wealth to support them,” saying, “as the median price of homes across the city has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, access to new mortgage loans for Black and Hispanic New Yorkers is disproportionately low.” According to the same report, in 2020, “White borrowers accounted for 44 percent of new loans for owner-occupied, one-to-four-unit properties in New York City, while Black and Hispanic borrowers each accounted for 11 percent, far less than their share of the total population in New York City.”2City of New York, Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness, City of New York. Homeownership determines what kind — if any — financial assistance a household may receive if their home is damaged by flooding, high winds, or another disaster, which in turn can affect a community’s ability to recover.3NYC Housing Preservation & Development, 2021 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey Selected Initial Findings, NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, May 16, 2022.
Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) Residential Security Risk Levels (Redlining)
Affordability
Given New York’s limited affordable housing supply, finding alternative housing after a storm can be a serious challenge, but especially so for low-income households. Most New Yorkers rent their homes, meaning they have little control over building repairs. If a hazard damages their unit, renters may need to quickly find a place to stay, even temporarily, while repairs are being made. Further, renters are often not eligible for post-disaster assistance, like FEMA’s Individual Assistance program, making them more vulnerable to financial hardship after a hazard event.
According to estimates from the 2023 New York Housing and Vacancy Survey, nearly half of New York City’s renter households can be classified as rent-burdened. The standard measure for “rent-burdened” is whether a household spends more than 30 percent of its pre-tax income on rent and is not assisted by either public housing or other housing vouchers. A rent-burdened household has a very limited financial margin to cope with unexpected expenses — a margin that tightens if people in the household also lose income due to a hazard event.
As more New Yorkers face higher housing costs, so too have more residents experienced homelessness in recent decades. New Yorkers experiencing homelessness may face increased exposure to hazard events due to limited access to safe shelters, evacuation routes, or emergency notifications. A disaster could also interrupt a person’s access to critical support, like social networks and health services, or make places like unoccupied structures and outdoor areas unsafe for people to occupy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the City moved some shelter occupants from shared living spaces into hotels, where they could better socially distance and reduce the spread of the virus.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in the United States, provides low-income housing to over 400,000 tenants. But after decades of federal disinvestment in public housing, NYCHA faces $40 billion in unmet capital needs — deficiencies that can leave structures more vulnerable to the impacts of natural hazards.4City of New York, Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness, City of New York. Hurricane Sandy, for example, left approximately 80,000 NYCHA residents in over 400 buildings without power, heat, and/or hot water. During the winter of 2017, extremely cold temperatures resulted in heat outages that cumulatively affected 80 percent of NYCHA residents.
To mitigate the impacts of climate change on New Yorkers, the Housing Our Neighbors Blueprint identifies the following strategies:
• Fast-track equitable decarbonization and beneficial electrification to serve low-income households.
• Cultivate financing and public support to ensure that all multifamily buildings can meet near-term sustainability targets.
• Implement zero carbon zoning.
• Make better use of state and federal funds.
Despite a limited budget and the large scale of public housing in the City, NYCHA is working aggressively to make its buildings more resilient to natural hazards. Since Sandy, NYCHA installed permanent, full-load generators at more than 200 buildings to supply electricity and heat to residents, in the event of a power outage.5NYC Housing Authority, “Recovery & Resilience Department: Program-Wide Milestones,” City of New York.
In late 2020, the agency released A Blueprint for Change, a draft strategic plan to address its long-term financial health and fund outstanding capital repairs.6NYC Housing Authority, A Blueprint for Change, New York City Housing Authority, July 2020.
Housing Tenure
Homelessness
Estimates of the number of people experiencing homelessness in NYC are based on the annual Point-In-Time estimate required of each Continuum of Care by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This count is performed by homeless outreach workers and volunteers on a single night in January. However, homelessness in NYC is a dynamic and complex system, and there are many limitations to the methods used to quantify the population.7Brodie Ramin and Tomislav Svoboda. “Health of the Homeless and Climate Change.” J Urban Health 86, no. 4 (July 2009): 654–64.
While homelessness exists across the country, and the world, it can take on different forms depending on factors such as local political context, climate, or geography. Unique to NYC is the legal right to shelter that applies to any individual or family in need of shelter in the city. This is the result of a consent decree established in 1981 following the 1979 Callahan v. Carey lawsuit, which argued that NYC must provide shelter to homeless men under Article XVII of the New York State constitution.
This was later formally expanded to women, children, and families in subsequent legal cases. An analysis of monthly shelter reports from City agencies who operate emergency shelters (including NYC Department of Homelessness, Human Resource Administration, Housing Preservation and Development, and Department of Youth and Community Development) demonstrates the importance of the right to shelter and how the number of people experiencing homelessness in NYC can vary throughout the year, with almost 90,000 people relying on the city’s shelter system in January 2023.
Emergency shelters, along with other homeless-related residential projects including transitional housing and permanent supportive housing, can be found in all five boroughs. However, the geographic distribution is concentrated in specific regions throughout the city.8Anna Browne, Climate Hazards and Homelessness: How NYC Hazard Mitigation Efforts Can Better Serve People Experiencing Homelessness, Pratt Institute, May 2023.
Unsheltered Homelessness
Unsheltered homelessness is defined by HUD as having a “primary nighttime location [that] is a public or private place not designated for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for people.”
In NYC, this takes the form of people living in parks, on subways, and on the streets. The annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) involves volunteers and City employees surveying people living unsheltered. Due to limitations in methods used to quantify this population, these numbers are likely an underestimate. Limitations of methods for counting and tracking the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness include the desire and need to remain hidden to avoid punitive measures that often respond to unsheltered homelessness. This presents difficulties in spatially analyzing the unsheltered population. In NYC, unsheltered residents have a higher average age than those in shelters. Unsheltered individuals may experience greater vulnerability in hazardous conditions, such as winter weather or extreme heat, due to exposure and compounding existing vulnerabilities. For example, cold stress can exacerbate existing chronic health conditions, inadequate clothing increases an individual’s loss of body heat, and malnutrition can lead to increased risk from cold-related illnesses.9Anna Browne, Climate Hazards and Homelessness, Pratt Institute, May 2023.