Greenpoint Edges It, and Keeps the Quiet
median livability score, Greenpoint streets vs Williamsburg streets
BestAge livability score
Greenpoint edges Williamsburg on our livability score, 58 to 56 across their graded streets, and the two neighborhoods are close enough that the headline is a near tie rather than a verdict.
Greenpoint keeps the column it is sold on. Greenpoint's quietness reading is 49 to Williamsburg's 30, and the gap comes from fewer 311 noise reports for the number of people living there.
What Williamsburg wins is reach. Williamsburg's access reading is 76 to Greenpoint's 67, and roughly a third of the score is exactly that. Both neighborhoods share one bad column: cleanliness, where Williamsburg reads 15 and Greenpoint 33, both near the floor of the city.
The Industrial Edge Holds Greenpoint Back
Greenpoint leads despite its industrial fringe, and the fringe is what keeps the lead narrow. A few dozen people live on streets along Newtown Creek that reach nothing on foot, and those streets pull Greenpoint's median down.
Van Dam Street scores 27 on our livability score and Porter Avenue 27, counted against the few dozen people who actually live on them and against a walk that reaches nothing. They are the bottom of the neighborhood, and there are enough of them along Newtown Creek to pull the average down.
Scores count 311 complaints, HPD violations, and NYPD crash records against the people who live on a street, add what that street reaches on foot, and rank it against streets of the same kind. Updated weekly.
Manhattan Avenue Is Not the Street to Avoid
Manhattan Avenue's livability score, level with Diamond Street, the best-scoring side street in Greenpoint.
Source: BestAge livability score
Manhattan Avenue is the commercial spine of Greenpoint, and the instinct is to walk a block off it. The score says otherwise. Manhattan Avenue sits at 76 on our livability score, level with Diamond Street, the best-scoring side street in Greenpoint, and Manhattan Avenue's quietness reading of 82 is higher than most of the side streets around it.
The arithmetic is the whole explanation. Roughly 2,800 homes sit on Manhattan Avenue. Milton Street holds fewer than two hundred homes and scores 59. The avenue's complaints are spread across fifteen times the people, and the trains and shops are on the avenue rather than off it.
One column ruins the picture. Manhattan Avenue's cleanliness reading of 14 is its weakest column and sits well below the Greenpoint average of 33, and it logs more raw HPD violations than any street around it. Those violations are spread over so many homes that its per-home housing score holds up, but a high overall score is still not a clean sidewalk.
Where Renters Still Get Burned
South 3rd Street's housing score. It logs more than 800 HPD violations.
Source: HPD violation records, counted per home
Williamsburg's Southside carries the heaviest housing load in either neighborhood. South 3rd Street logs more than 800 HPD violations and posts a housing reading of 9, close to the floor of its peer group, while its overall score sits mid-table because its access is excellent and its crash record is unremarkable.
That combination is the single most useful thing on this page. The overall grade will not warn you about a landlord. The housing column will, and it is the column to open before you sign anything on South 1st through South 5th, or on Huron Street in Greenpoint.
The check takes two minutes. Open the street's page, read the housing score and the raw HPD count, then run the same check on the other address you are considering.