Noise complaints in New York City and their relationship with housing cost—Before and after COVID

Abstract

This work explores how escalating New York City rent and noise dissatisfaction may interrelate, and whether pre-pandemic trends held up during 2020 and beyond. Are there parts of town that combine affordable rent and low noise complaint rates? Can past complaints and housing trends predict when and where noise complaints are most likely, and does this hold up in a city on lockdown? Using eleven years of New York City “311” hotline noise complaint records (over three million individual complaints) and combining these with neighborhood rent statistics, comparisons can be made on a local level. A positive correlation is apparent between monthly median rent and monthly noise complaint rate in every borough and sub-district in the city. Whether this is causal or inflationary coincidence is uncertain, and massively increased complaint rates during lockdown defy past trends.