Williamsburg Scores 21. Bayside Scores 71.
sanitation complaints filed per 1,000 homes a year in Williamsburg's 11211 and Bayside's 11361
311 records joined to PLUTO housing counts, updated weekly
Williamsburg's 11211 averages 21 out of 100 on cleanliness. Bayside's 11361 averages 71. Behind those two numbers sits a raw gap of about seventeen to one: over the last twelve months, streets in 11211 generated roughly fifty-two sanitation complaints for every thousand homes on them, and streets in 11361 generated three.
This is a record of complaints filed, not an inspection. Nobody from the city walked the block and graded it. What the score measures is how often the people on a street called 311 about the state of it, divided by how many homes and businesses are there to call.
Older versions of this measure divided by street length, which quietly rewarded low-density neighborhoods for having fewer people spread along a longer block. Counted per household, the borough averages spread across ten points, from Queens at 56 down to Brooklyn at 46, and inside every one of them the block separates far more than the borough does. The column is a percentile inside a street's own type, so 50 is the middle of that type. Under 25 puts a street in the bottom quarter of its type, and you will see the reason on your first visit.
| Borough | Cleanliness | Blocks at 85+ |
|---|---|---|
| Queens | 56 | 292 |
| Staten Island | 50 | 172 |
| The Bronx | 48 | 162 |
| Manhattan | 46 | 95 |
| Brooklyn | 46 | 178 |
What a Sanitation Complaint Actually Is
Six 311 complaint types feed this score: dirty conditions, sanitation condition, rodent, unsanitary animal on private property, graffiti, and litter basket requests. In the records arriving now, three of the six do almost all of the work, and two of those three do nearly all of it. Rodent reports are the largest single component citywide, graffiti reports the second, and unsanitary animal reports a distant third.
So the cleanliness column is mostly a rat score and a graffiti score added together, and those two problems do not live in the same places.
Williamsburg's 11211 is a graffiti ZIP. Its cleanliness records run about five graffiti reports for every rodent report, which is why a neighborhood with newish buildings and private trash contracts still finishes near the bottom of the city.
11226, which covers Flatbush and Ditmas Park, is the mirror image, running about five rodent reports for every graffiti report and landing at 36. Greenpoint's 11222 tips graffiti-first at 30. Yorkville's 10028 runs rodent reports over graffiti by more than thirty to one and still averages 54, above the citywide 50.
Two scores in the teens can describe completely different problems.
Note: The cleanliness score alone will not tell you whether rats or graffiti put a block near the bottom.
Cleanest Neighborhoods by Borough
Bayside reads 71, near the top of the ZIP codes we grade, with Oakland Gardens' 11364 further back at 59. Neither has a subway, which is the trade the number does not show you.
Battery Park City is the Manhattan cluster. North End Avenue scores 99 and South End Avenue 99, and both are single developments rather than mixed blocks: North End Avenue is 6 buildings holding 1,367 homes, South End Avenue 4 buildings holding 2,165 homes. A managed complex handles its own trash and calls 311 about very little.
Manhattan's top of the cleanliness column is a tie, and one of the streets in it sits twelve miles north of Battery Park City, at the top of the island. Marble Hill Avenue scores 100 and grades 73 overall, on 32 buildings and 484 homes, which is a real block rather than one address.
The Bronx runs a deep line of near-perfect scores through Pelham Bay and Morris Park, where Tratman Avenue scores 99. One of Brooklyn's cleanest readings belongs to Vital Avenue in Starrett City at 99, a single 451-home development on one building lot. Queens holds a quarter of the city's perfect scores, including Fairview Avenue in Ridgewood at 100, and Staten Island's McClean Avenue matches it at 100.
Williamsburg and Park Slope sit at the other end of the same list. Two of the most sought-after addresses in New York are also two of the worst-scoring on this measure, block for block and household for household.
Williamsburg's 11211 averages 21 out of 100 on cleanliness. Bayside's 11361 averages 71. The neighborhood with the stronger reputation is the one that scores worse.
What Moves a Street's Score
Three things move it, and we measure none of them directly.
Our reading is that foot traffic is the driver. Every ZIP at the bottom of this page is a place people go rather than only a place people live, and the sanitation load scales with visitors while the divisor counts the residents who are there to call it in.
Commercial density does the same work at street scale, and the gap inside one borough is enormous. Berry Street in Williamsburg scores 3 on cleanliness. Marine Avenue in Bay Ridge, in the same borough and on the same measure, scores 99.
Building management is the third factor, and here we are guessing rather than measuring. A co-op board that keeps its own frontage clean does not file complaints about it, and that shows up as a good score for a reason the data cannot see.
Now go check the block you are actually considering. Look up the exact street and read the cleanliness score next to the other eight. It is the score most likely to disagree with a neighborhood's reputation, and the one a weekend visit will confirm or overturn fastest.