Demographics

The only public housing projects that can be found in Coney Island are found in Seagate Coney Island and are called the “Coney Island Houses”. According to the New York City Housing Authority, there are five buildings with fourteen stories each, totaling in 535 apartments that house 1,398 people. The buildings were completed on January 31, 1957, and since then have housed many residents.

These buildings are all located in the same area—that is, to say, in Seagate. Because public housing is for those who cannot usually afford it (the New York City Housing Authority website’s mission statement states that their goal is to provide opportunities to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers), it would only make sense that the unemployment rate would be so high in Seagate.

Unfortunately, the Housing Authority does not include income level or unemployment rate in its statistics, so only inferences can be made as to the reason for extremely high unemployment rates in Seagate. Historically, those living in the Coney Island Houses appear to have been mainly white families.

A few of the children who grew up in the Coney Island Houses in the 1960s have set up a blog detailing their experiences and sharing childhood memories with their neighbors of old, showing a vivid visual contrast between the houses as they appear today and as they appeared in the 1960s.

A visual observation of those who live in Seagate’s public housing today revealed that there are far more families of color residing in the buildings, compared to the 1960s, when most, if not all, of the families residing in the Coney Island Houses were white. Clearly, this does not mean that no black families were receiving “low- and moderate-income” in the 1960s, but rather that discrimination was still strong and even reached into Coney Island.

Interestingly enough, ethnicity levels vary between Seagate and the Brightons. In “The Continuing Russification of Jewish New York” by Annelise Orleck, from the compilation “One Out of Three” by Nancy Foner, there are frequent mentions of Russian Jews moving into Coney Island. However, looking at the data distribution, this does not prove accurate for Seagate.

In Seagate, 10.4% of the population is Russian, 4% is West Indian, 3.4% is Italian, 2.7% is Sub-Saharan African, and 2.3% is Ukrainian. In Brighton Beach, 18.6% of the population is Russian, 8.5% is Ukrainian, 1.7% is Italian, 0.2% is West Indian, and 0.1% is Sub-Saharan African. In West Brighton, a whopping 31.4% of people are Russian, while 10.5% are Ukrainian, 2.8% are Italian, 0.3% are West Indian, and no people at all are from Sub-Saharan Africa.

What is interesting about these figures is that though there are more Russians and Ukrainian people in the Brightons than in Coney Island, Coney Island still has a higher unemployment rate than both of the Brightons.

In contrast, the chapter in Foner’s compilation states that Russian Jewish women had an extremely difficult time trying to find employment in the United States—especially employment that mirrored the professions they had in their native country. The data reflects that a higher rate of unemployment is consistent with the number of households that are female-headed, implying that perhaps a correlation could be made between these Russian immigrant women and Seagate.

This is in contrast to the low number of female-headed households in Brighton Beach and West Brighton due to higher numbers of households headed by married couples. Furthermore, it is shown that Brighton Beach and West Brighton have significantly more Russians and Ukrainians in their ethnic makeup than Seagate, therefore debunking the correlation.

The employment rates for Brighton Beach, Seagate, and West Brighton tell different stories. There are approximately 95,000 people living in Community District 13, and of those people, 87,103 are over the age of 16. In the entire area, almost half are not in the labor force, and the percentage of unemployment is 13%. However, when looking at the individual district statistics, the unemployment rate is 6.7% for Brighton Beach and 3.7% for West Brighton.

Seagate’s unemployment rate is 15.6%. Of the estimated 25,091 people who are over 16 in Seagate, only 11,954 people are in the labor force, and 12 of those people are in the armed forces. There are 1,863 people who are currently unemployed in Seagate, 7.4% of the total population over 16 compared to Brighton Beach’s 3.4% and West Brighton’s 1.8%. To make things more drastic, Brighton Beach actually has more people over 16 than Seagate does—approximately 1,269 more people.

West Brighton has approximately 10,743 fewer people than Seagate, but that is still not half of Seagate’s population. If we halve the percentage rate of unemployment for Seagate (bringing the population down to a proportional representation in comparison with West Brighton), the percentage rate becomes 3.7, still much higher than West Brighton’s unemployment rate. Additionally, over half of its population over 16 is not in the labor force, so the primary question is: what happened to Seagate’s labor force?

The answer to that question could possibly be found in the sociological statistics for Community District 13. Of the 11,497 households in Seagate, 59.9% (4,653) are households consisting of married couples, 36% (1,695) of which have children, 4.3% (337) of households are male only, 26.7% (90) of which have children, and 2,783 are female only, 55.8% (1,555) of which have children. According to the data, therefore, over half of the female-headed households in Seagate are single mothers, which could potentially be one of reasons that employment levels are so low in Seagate.

Interestingly, when compared with Brighton Beach, which has 13,788 households, Seagate has fewer households, but more female-headed households. In addition, only 31.4% of female-headed households have children, compared with the 55.8% from Seagate, and in West Brighton, only 34.5% of female-headed households contain children under 18 years of age.

Similar disparities occur over household statistics of married couples and male-headed households (with no wife present) concerning Brighton Beach and West Brighton. Another point of interest that may account for the high unemployment rate in the Seagate community may be the amount of grandparents who are responsible for their grandchildren. As in the previously discussed statistics, there are more similarities between West Brighton and Brighton Beach than Seagate.

While Seagate contains 937 grandparents who live with their own grandchildren under 18 years of age, there are only 496 in Brighton Beach and 275 in West Brighton. As the unemployment rate possibly does not take into consideration the retired and the elderly, these grandparents who stay with their grandchildren likely cause some error in the unemployment rate. However, we cannot tell if this is true or not with statistics alone.

Another factor in the unemployment rate may be the educational attainment levels and languages spoken in the district. In West Brighton, about 90.3% of people are a high school graduate or higher and 38% have obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher. Similarly, in Brighton Beach, approximately 86.6% of people have a high school diploma, and 39.6% have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In Seagate, however, only 69.5% of people have a high school diploma, and only 19.7% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Many places of employment require or prefer applicants to have a college degree, which cannot be told with the socioeconomic data of New York City.

Additionally, many places of employment prefer bilingual candidates, but 52% of the population who are over five years of age only speak English in Seagate. In Brighton Beach, only 16.1% speak only English, and in West Brighton, 33.9% only speak English. The educational attainment levels and language deficiencies are, by far, two of the strongest potential reasons why the unemployment rate in Seagate is so high.