Neighborhood Description

State guidelines for neighborhood revitalization funds require that at least 50% of households in an eligible neighborhood earn less the 80% of area median income, and that at least 25% of households in the neighborhood earn less than 50% of area median income. The household income profile of the Great Falls Neighborhood easily meets these income requirements according to two measures of area median income: the FY 2019 HUD Family Median Income estimate for the BergenPassaic, NJ HUD Metro Fair Market Rent Area, and the Median Household Income for Passaic County, NJ as determined by the 2019 ACS.(See chart on right on page 19)

However, in recent years there have been signs of economic improvement in the incomes of neighborhood households. Between the 2013 and 2019 ACS estimates, the neighborhood median household income increased by at least 16%, from between $25,000 and $29,999 to between $35,000 to $39,999. During that same period, the neighborhood poverty rate has declined from 42.8% to 30.8%.

The majority (84%) of neighborhood households rent their homes in the neighborhood. Nearly one-in-five (19.5%) neighborhood households receives some form of rental housing subsidy. The neighborhood has 137 subsidized housing units at 14 Van Houten Street. Hamilton Square at 20 Mill Street has 68 subsidized units. The Paterson Housing Authority operates one 96-unit public housing site in the Great Falls Neighborhood—the Dr. Andrew McBride Residence at 22-26 Ellison Street. Through the HUD Multifamily Program, an additional 286 units effectively operate as public housing at two privately owned neighborhood sites: Martin de Porres Village at 1 Green St. and the Essex and Phoenix Mills on Van Houten and Mill Streets. Moreover, another 265 units across six neighborhood sites are restricted as affordable units for low-income tenants through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program.

Despite the significant proportion of residents receiving rental housing subsidy, housing affordability remains a problem in the Great Falls, with over a third of both renters and homeowners spending more than 50% of their income on housing costs. Experts generally define housing as “affordable” if housing costs are no greater than 30% of a household’s income. As such, a household earning the neighborhood median household income of around $35,000 should spend no more than $10,500 a year or $875 a month on housing costs for its housing unit to be affordable. However, the median monthly rent in the neighborhood is between $1,000-$1,300. Only 33.5% on neighbor- hood units are less than $1,000 a month, and less than half of those are larger than a one-bedroom unit.

This scarcity of affordable, larger sized units is a problem given that the average neighborhood household size is 3.4 people. In the neighborhood, over 1,350 households – representing 38.5% of total neighborhood households — consist of four or more residents.

In almost every Block Group in the neighborhood, a household making the neighborhood median household income would not be able to afford the median rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Some parts of the neighborhood do appear to have somewhat more affordable rents. However, the rents in these parts may be skewed by the presence of significant subsidized housing complexes, and may not reflect the reality of the private rental market.

In the Great Falls Neighborhood, 16% of households are homeowners. The neighborhood homeownership rate has declined over 20% since the year 2000, when it was 20.7%, with most of that decline occurring since 2010. The neighborhood’s decline in homeownership is similar to that experienced by the City of Paterson as a whole, which has seen its homeownership rate decline 17% over the same period, from 31.5% in 2000 to 26.1% in 2019.

Despite this neighborhood-wide decline in homeownership, the homeownership rate has actually increased significantly in most of the western section of the neighborhood over the last five years. This location has the highest percentage of single and two-family structures in the neighborhood.