Even before immigration laws were relaxed in the 1960s, many Greek immigrants found a home in Astoria. It was the neighborhood where Greeks settled in their first great wave of immigration, and the community was well-established. Through the 1970s, this trend of Greek migration was strong, because Greece was being ruled by a militant right-wing group which successfully pulled off a coup. However once that government was ousted and Greece joined the EU, there was less reason for Greeks to leave their country. In fact, many Greek Americans went back to their cultural homeland in Greece.
The 80s brought in a wave of mostly poor Latino and South Asian migrants, and with them, their wonderful cuisines. Greek food was already popular among young professionals. Astoria, then, became home to a large restaurant and bar scene. With the housing turnover rate high as Greeks moved back across the ocean, yuppies started moving in en masse to take advantage of the cheap rent market.
In addition, many middle-class immigrants, especially from East Asia, Brazil and the Caribbean, have diversified the neighborhood: just under two-thirds of the residents live in integrated areas, while around a quarter of the neighborhood tracts are majority white; starting in the 1990s, this trend has been encouraged by rezoning efforts, as well as the availability of rent-regulated units (53% of rental units are rent-regulated.) Evidence of this can be seen by the fact that the Asian and Latino populations in Astoria hold more higher education degrees than the White residents. One British blogger, Annabel Short, has started a project to document the interesting and varied peoples of Astoria by interviewing people on 30th Ave.
Astoria is unique in that, while its gentrification is driven largely by white out-of-towners, young NYC-born professionals, and European immigrants, it has become more integrated as it has gentrified because of middle-class immigrants from regions that are not predominantly white. This is not to deemphasize the pressure to leave that it has put on poor immigrants from previous migration waves who cannot afford the rising prices. The racial diversity index has gone down since 2000, indicating that more white people have been moving into the neighborhood. (The RDI is calculated from US Census data; it is the probability that two randomly chosen people in a given neighborhood will be of a different race.)
Many Greek-Americans returned to Greece during the half decade of prosperity. However, when the global economic slowdown began in 2008 and Greece’s economy tanked, many found moving back to Astoria to be difficult, due to raised housing prices and competition for housing to be much stronger. While Astoria’s population continued to rise through 2000, it dropped due to the Greek Americans who did not come back.
The age demographic in Astoria has changed. It went from being a family-oriented neighborhood to a young professional neighborhood, and that is reflected in the 2010 Census: ~45% of Astorians are age 18-44, versus ~38% nation-wide. Ages 25-34 is the sweet spot of that stat- over 6% higher than the national average. Many of the people moving to Astoria are singles or young couples looking for a steal, though of course prices are going up due to gentrification. More about that in the real estate section.
Based on what we know about wealth and income disparities along racial/ethnic lines, it is quite clear from the graphics below that Astoria is gentrified/gentrifying. All racial/ethnic minorities are underrepresented. A city that was once characterized as a melting pot now has a proportion of white people in the neighborhood that nearly mirrors the national population demographics.
(All charts and graphs until this point from CLRSearch.com)
