The Neighborhood of Flushing

 Quick Facts

• The neighborhood of Flushing was created and founded in 1645.
• Flushing was known for a major event that took place in 1657 called the Flushing Remonstrance.
• The population of what is considered to be  the greater part of Flushing, Whitestone and College Point, as of 2010 was approximately 171,530 residents.
• 40% of the population is Chinese.
• 13% of the population is Korean.
• Columbian immigrants account for 6% of the population.
• Taiwanese, Ecuadorian, and Indian immigrants each account for 4% of the population.
• The majority of the businesses in Whitestone and College Point are small businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
• During 2007 and 2009 more people owned homes than rented in Whitestone and College Point.
• Many of the religious temples that are built in Flushing also serve as community centers to help immigrants get better acquainted with American culture.

The  Whitestone Bridge at Night                                                                                   The Streets of College Point

The Current Demography of Flushing

This report will not focus on the whole neighborhood of Flushing, but mostly Whitestone and College Point, the greater part of Flushing. According to the new York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), College Point neighborhood is located in northwest Queens and is separated from the rest of the borough by the College Point Corporate Park, which is north of the Whitestone Expressway. Whitestone, on the other hand, is located north of the Cross Island Parkway and west of Clintonville Street.² Presently, Flushing is home to many different types of people and many types of cultures. In fact, according to Thomas DiNapoli and Kenneth Bleiweas, authors of “An Economic Snapshot of Flushing, Queens,” during the beginning of the 1980’s, there was a wave of immigration that changed Flushing into one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Queens.³ Today, the majority of the Flushing population is Asian, with immigrants coming mostly from China and Korea. The greater part of Flushing, Whitestone and College Point, actually has the third-largest concentration of immigrants in New York City, with a little more than half of its population born outside of the United States. The Chinese residents (both foreign-born and domestic), who accounted for approximately forty percent of the population in 2010, make up the largest ethnic group in Flushing. The Koreans, the second largest ethnic group in Flushing, make up approximately thirteen percent of the population. Although the Chinese and Korean residents make up the majority of the population, there are other ethnic groups that also live in Flushing, as well. According to DiNapoli and Bleiwas, in the greater part of Flushing, immigrants come from more than seventy different countries. Some of them include Columbia, Ecuador, Taiwan and India.³ Even though there are less of these foreign-born immigrants living in Flushing, as compared to the Chinese and the Koreans; they still make up a good amount. The foreign-born Chinese residents account for approximately twenty-nine percent of the population while the foreign-born Korean residents account for approximately seventeen percent.³ The Columbian immigrant residents, on the other hand, account for less. They make up about six percent of the population while Taiwanese immigrants account for approximately four percent. Immigrants from both Ecuador and India also make up approximately four percent of the Flushing population, as well.³

Jobs

Although the increase in the enrollment in schools has negative effects, there are some positive outcomes that can result from it. The students who are trying to get an education are doing so in order to hopefully get a good paying job in the end. This might be a problem because Flushing currently has many jobs but most of them are in the small business sector. According to DiNapoli and Bleiwas, the United States Census Bureau stated that “‘76.4 percent of the 5,570 businesses in Flushing employed fewer than five workers in 2009, compared to 60.5 percent in New York State and 54.6 percent nationwide.’”³ Flushing has predominately small businesses and very few employees in those businesses. Approximately ninety percent of the Flushing’s businesses have fewer than ten employees, which is a large percent compared to the rest of Queens and New York City. There are only eighteen firms in the neighborhood of Flushing that had more than 250 employees, however, half of these firms are located in the health care and social assistance sector.Because of the limited number of jobs in the big businesses, there is more competition for jobs in places such as hospitals, nursing care facilities, and home care services.³ However, Flushing has experienced increases in employment over the past decade or so. According to DiNapol and Bleiwas, employment has risen every year since 2005, even during the Great Recession in 2008.  This was very spectacular because the rate at which Flushing’s employment was increasing was much larger than the employment increase rate of the rest of Queens. In 2010, the number of jobs in Flushing had increased by approximately three percent while the rest of Queens had a small decline in job growth.³ Despite the majority of small businesses in the area, Flushing has experienced a significant amount of job growth over the past decade.