Payson Avenue, Manhattan: Grade C · 311, HPD & Crash Data
Grade C, 45 out of 100. How does Payson Avenue in Manhattan rank for traffic safety, noise, and cleanliness?
Livability score
Grade C, livability 45 out of 100.
Calm 29, ranked against smaller avenues. Access 75, ranked against every street in the city. More complaints per home than most smaller avenues, but a lot within a walk.
That puts Payson Avenue in the bottom 32% of scored streets citywide.
Strongest on traffic safety (47) and food nearby (83). Housing (8) is the weak spot.
On the record
Heat and hot water is the most-filed complaint on Payson Avenue, with 237 reports. Across every category, 394 reports sit on this street's 311 file, and 60% of them name heat and hot water. Illegal parking follows with 81 reports, and street/sidewalk noise with 36. The file runs across 51 distinct 311 categories in all. Set against the 383 homes on file, that is about 103 reports per 100 homes.
Inspectors have written 49 Class C violations on Payson Avenue, the tier the city treats as an immediate health or safety risk, about 13 per 100 homes on file. HPD's most-cited category on Payson Avenue is pests, at 28 violations. Paint and lead accounts for 28 more, and doors for 16. The housing file lists 18 residential buildings on Payson Avenue holding 383 homes, with 10 walk-ups and 5 elevator buildings among them. Across those buildings the average is about 21 homes each.
NYPD records 5 people injured in crashes on Payson Avenue since 2021.
Among smaller avenues, Payson Avenue ranks 36 on cleanliness and 10 on quietness. That 10 on quietness puts Payson Avenue in the weakest quarter of smaller avenues. Measured against smaller avenues, parking sits at 31 and infrastructure at 19. Transit ranks 77 and tree cover 60, both against every street in the city rather than inside the band. Food nearby is the strongest of the three citywide measures here, at 83. The band those ranks are drawn from holds about 1,360 smaller avenues.
The strongest band-ranked measure on Payson Avenue is traffic safety, at 47.
54% of the 383 homes recorded on Payson Avenue are rent-stabilized, 208 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 Manhattan
- Cooper Street, Manhattan
- Seaman Avenue, Manhattan
- Cumming Street, Manhattan
- W 207 Street, Manhattan
- Dyckman Street, Manhattan
- Vermilyea Avenue, Manhattan
Payson Avenue runs through Washington Heights and Inwood, where every scored street in the neighborhood is ranked beside it.
Every scored street in Manhattan, the citywide rankings of all 5,700+ graded streets, or Manhattan vs Brooklyn: How the Two Boroughs Score (2026 Data).