Comptroller’s Report Gauges Local ‘Fair Share’ in City’s Allocation of Benefits and Responsibilities
A new analysis from City Comptroller Brad Lander quantifies where Lower Manhattan stands in terms of “Fair Share” criteria, which mandate that City government ensure public services and facilities are “evenly and equitably distributed across all neighborhoods and communities.” These regulations apply to all government services, and are designed to provide for the fair distribution of City facilities—independently of whether communities perceive these facilities as beneficial or burdensome.
Mr. Lander’s analysis judges each of New York’s 59 community districts by a range of criteria. Community District 1 (CD1)—a mosaic of neighborhoods encompassing 1.5 square miles, bounded roughly by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge—scores favorably by most of these metrics.
For police response times, CD1 average two minutes and two seconds, which is slightly better than the City-wide average of two minutes and 18 seconds. Fire response times (which include calls for emergency medical assistance) are three minutes and 47 seconds for Lower Manhattan, which ranks just slightly behind the best time (of three minutes and 30 seconds) for any community in the five boroughs.
Lower Manhattan is especially fortunate in terms of access to parks. Measured as the proportion of local residents out of 1,000 whose homes are located more than 15-minute walk from a park space, CD1 tallies roughly 0.06 such persons. This appears to mean that out of 61,000 people who live within CD1, there are approximately four who do not have convenient access to green space. (The Comptroller’s report did not include their names or addresses.)
One form of civic infrastructure that is universally unpopular is waste processing facilities. CD1 is among 45 community districts that do not contain any Department of Sanitation or private waste hauler staging grounds. (Indeed, Mr. Lander’s report notes that almost three quarters of all the garbage collected in the five boroughs is processed in just five community districts each day: two in Brooklyn, two in the south Bronx, and one in Staten Island.)
Another kind of municipal facility that arouses local ambivalence is homeless shelters. Measured as a ratio of active beds in proportion to every 1,000 residents, Lower Manhattan carries this burden relatively lightly, with 3.86 beds per 1,000 residents. For comparison, CD5 (roughly encompassing Midtown, between Lexington and Eighth Avenues, from 14th to 59th Streets) has 91 shelter beds for every 1,000 residents, which translates to a total capacity of 4,300 beds. That noted, Lower Manhattan’s share of shelter beds has grown in recent years. The Comptroller found that in July 2018, CD1 had 1.85 beds per 1,000 residents (or roughly 112 total), which jumped to 3.86 beds (less than 250 total) by 2023.
A closely related metric is the number of immigrant asylum shelters created to house the 100,000 refugees who have streamed into New York during the past 18 months. Lower Manhattan has 32 such beds per 1,000 residents, or an approximate total capacity of 1,950 beds. This comes to slightly more than three percent of the total 60,000-plus emergency beds created by the City in response to the refugee crisis, almost all of which are located in hotels. For context, Midtown’s CD5 has 312 beds per 1,000 residents, and is home to almost two-thirds of the emergency shelter capacity created for refugees.