New Yorkers residing in downtown Brooklyn and the west side of Manhattan could gain clout when the 51 City Council districts are redrawn this year — thanks to huge population increases in their neighborhoods, new figures reveal.
The City Council is required to reapportion its districts every 10 years based on the changes in inhabitants, and the 15-member commission tasked with the endeavor could release its preliminary maps on Friday.
“The reality is the New York City from 12 years ago is totally different than the New York City of today,” said district commission chairman Dennis Walcott, a former city schools chancellor and deputy mayor who now heads the Queens Public Library.
The Big Apple saw its population overall grow by a significant 7.7%, or 630,000 residents for the census count from 2010 to 2020.
Districts are currently meant to average about 162,000 residents each. But to accommodate the population growth, the newly re-drawn districts are supposed to each contain about 173,000 inhabitants, or within five percentage point range of that number.
“It’s going to be challenging. We’re going to see real changes to the Council districts citywide,” said Councilwoman Julie Menin, who represents Manhattan’s Upper East Side and headed the city’s census count under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Neighborhoods seeing some of the largest increases include those in downtown Brooklyn and along the borough’s waterfront, the site of new housing developments, according to data crunched by the NYC Council Districting Commission.
For example in Councilman Lincoln Restler’s District 33 (Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown BK, DUMBO, Greenpoint, Vinegar Hill, Williamsburg), the population surged to 206,960 residents.
That means there would be an overflow of about 35,000 residents in the 33 — or around 20 percent of the current population — who would have to be split into at least two council seats.
In the Downtown Brooklyn-DUMBO-Boerum Hill neighborhoods, the population surged by 67% and by 41% in Williamsburg, according to the Department of City Planning. So at least two council members would also have to be accountable to these neighborhoods thanks to the influx of newcomers.
The same holds true for the lower west side of Manhattan.
Chelsea-Hudson Yards and Hell’s Kitchen each gained more than 13,000 residents over the past decade. And Councilman Eric Botcher’s District 3 (Greenwich Village, Hudson Yards, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Times Square, Flatiron, Columbus Circle) now has 202,510 residents.
That’s an overflow of 29,870 residents from the average district population sought by the commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor and Council.
“Bottom line is that the non-Hispanic white population had been reconcentrating in areas that ring the Manhattan CBD [Central Business District] , many of which were formerly predominantly minority working class areas – and still are to a considerable degree – but which are now much more mixed, for example East Williamsburg or Bushwick,” said John Mollenkopf, director of the center of urban research at the CUNY Graduate Center.
“This may prove challenging for elected officials whose voting base is in a declining minority population,” he added.
Meanwhile Washington Heights/Inwood is one of the few areas of the city that saw its population decline, based on updated census data. The population in District 10 taking in heavily Latino Washington Heights/Inwood is 158,511 — considerably lower than required.
The re-drawn district encompassing in those neighborhoods will have to take in thousands of residents from elsewhere, such as the more diversified West Harlem, Morningside Heights and Hamilton Heights in District 7.
That change would have a ripple effect affecting at least one other district, Molllenkopf said.
“District 7 would have to gain people from the Upper West Side, given that efforts will be made to preserve District 9 as a black, Harlem district,” he said.
“In the process, both 10 and 7 will gain white non-Hispanic voters, who have been increasing in these areas anyway (including in Harlem) or take in more population from the heavily Latino Bronx.”
City demographers attributed part of the population decline in northern Manhattan to newcomers with smaller families replacing larger ones.
Similarly, District 40 in central and southern Brooklyn — currently represented by Councilwoman Rita Joseph — has only 155,155 residents following the loss of population over the last decade and will have to take in thousands of new inhabitants from surrounding areas.
The district includes the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Kensington, Midwood, Prospect Park and Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
Complicating reapportionment is that the Council must adhere to the 1964 federal Voting Rights Act to avoid diluting the voting power of racial and language minorities.
The Council criteria for redistricting is also much stricter than what Albany uses to draw congressional and state legislative districts to prevent partisan gerrymandering.
The courts tossed out the initial congressional and state Senate maps drawn by Democrats earlier this year as unconstitutional for engaging in partisan gerrymandering — which Republican critics branded the “Hochulmander” because Gov. Kathy Hochul approved it.
The court hired its own special master to redraw the congressional and Senate maps.
The city districting commission must also draw new districts that reflect the growth of the general population. For instance, there are 345,000 more Asian residents in the city and 154,000 more Hispanic New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the city’s black population shrunk by 84,000 while the number of white residents overall dropped by 3,000.
The Council Districting Commission held an initial round of public hearings on the issue, and more hearings will be held on the new proposed districts once preliminary maps are released.
