21 Avenue, Queens: Grade C+ · 311, HPD & Crash Data
Grade C+, 57 out of 100. How does 21 Avenue in Queens rank for traffic safety, noise, and cleanliness?
Livability score
Grade C+, livability 57 out of 100.
Calm 62, ranked against busy avenues. Access 47, ranked against every street in the city. Fewer complaints per home than most busy avenues, but little within a walk.
That puts 21 Avenue in the top 30% of scored streets citywide.
Strongest on street crime (83) and tree cover (98). Transit (21) is the weak spot. Access is 35% of this grade. If you drive, it likely understates your block.
On the record
Illegal parking is the most-filed complaint on 21 Avenue, with 184 reports. Across every category, 827 reports sit on this street's 311 file, and 22% of them name illegal parking. Residential noise follows with 84 reports, and blocked driveway with 77. Reports on 21 Avenue span 80 distinct 311 categories. Divided by the homes on file, 21 Avenue carries roughly 47 reports per 100 of them.
21 Avenue carries 34 Class C violations on its HPD file, the most serious of the three classes an inspector can write, about 2 per 100 homes on file. HPD's most-cited category on 21 Avenue is pests, at 41 violations. Paint and lead accounts for 33 more, and bed bugs for 22. City housing records put 1,764 homes in 585 residential buildings on 21 Avenue, 81 of them walk-up apartment buildings and 0 of them buildings with an elevator. That averages about 3 homes to a building.
Reported crashes on 21 Avenue have injured 49 people since 2021.
Among busy avenues, 21 Avenue ranks 78 on quietness and 35 on cleanliness. A 35 on cleanliness places 21 Avenue in the weaker half of busy avenues. Infrastructure ranks 56 on the same scale, with parking at 37. The citywide frame puts food nearby at 55 and transit at 21. Of the three measures ranked citywide, tree cover is the strongest on 21 Avenue, at 98. About 550 busy avenues make up the band 21 Avenue is scored inside.
The strongest band-ranked measure on 21 Avenue is housing, at 83.
About 24% of the 1,764 homes on file are rent-stabilized, 422 homes in all.
Scores are built from 311 complaints, HPD violations, NYPD crash records, NYPD felony complaint records, MTA stop locations, DOHMH food permits, and the street tree census, divided by the homes and businesses on the street, updated weekly. Read the scoring method or the data sources.
Nearest streets in Queens
- Jackson Mill Road, Queens
- 90 Place, Queens
- Ericsson Street, Queens
- 19 Road, Queens
- Astoria Boulevard, Queens
- Butler Street, Queens
21 Avenue runs through Astoria, Whitestone and Bay Terrace, where every scored street in the neighborhood is ranked beside it.
Every scored street in Queens, the citywide rankings of all 5,700+ graded streets, or Queens vs Brooklyn: How the Two Boroughs Score (2026 Data).