I Drove Into New York City's Most Dangerous Neighborhood. This Is What I Saw.

Wow! This was NOT what I expected to see. Crazy stuff.

For a long time now, I kept hearing about a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Brownsville. People kept saying - you think the South Bronx is bad - you need to see BROWNSVILLE. It’s roooough. And the data backs it up - Brownsville has been called the most dangerous neighborhood in New York City. It has a bad reputation that goes back a long time.

So of course I had to see it. So I went there. It was a cold and breezy day in NYC the day I arrived - the sun was out, but it was only 38 degrees. We’re gonna take a drive through the worst neighborhood in the city, learn a little bit about the place, and talk to residents who live here.

Ahh Brownsville. The notorious BBK. If you live in the greater New York City area, you’ve heard of how bad this place is. There’s shootings and robberies here all the time. It’s located on the eastern side of Brooklyn, near East New York, about halfway between Manhattan and JFK. 58,000 people live here, packed into a 1 square mile. It’s just about one square mile of housing projects.

It’s been dangerous here for 100 years now. In the late 1920’s, the organized crime group Murder Inc operated out of Brownsville. They were the enforcement arm for the Italian Mafia and the Jewish Mob.

This place used to be called Browns Village. It was marketed to the Jewish community, and then a lot of African Americans moved in in the 1950s because it was affordable. Many of the black families that moved into Brownsville were already poor, and their timing was bad - as soon as they began to arrive, factories began to shut down.

Then the NY Housing Authority built a lot of housing projects here, which brought in a lot more African Americans and Latinos. We’ll see many of the housing projects as we drive along. It’s said Brownsville has the highest concentration of housing projects in the nation. There’s 100 different housing projects here.

When things got dangerous here, the Jewish factory worker families moved out.

As poor families flooded in, crime began to spike here. Soon, by the 1980s, this place was known nationwide as outrageous for crime and poverty. Many of these housing projects had the highest per-capita arrests of any housing developments in the city. Unemployment and welfare plagued the housing developments here, which flamed the spike in crime. The single-mother rate in Brownsville was also twice the national rate.

In the 70s, they tried knocking down a lot of the abandoned tantament style apartments and putting in townhouse style apartment homes. But crime kept going up, as local gangs used the new apartments for their operations.

Today, things are still really bad. Gentrification hasn’t taken hold, since the neighborhood is surrounded on all sides by other high poverty, high crime hoods.

Only half the kids in Brownsville graduate high school. 40% of the population lives in poverty, and 1 in 6 people hasn’t worked in a long time. It’s the poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn and the 7th poorest in all of New York City, where families bring in about $22,000 a year. That’s why so many live in these housing projects.

It doesn’t help that 40% of the kids born here are to teenage mothers. Nor does it help that the incarceration rate among Brownsville residents is the 2nd highest of all New York City neighborhoods, either. Drug related hospitalizations, obesity, lack of health insurance, mental illness, a lot of businesses closing here. It’s sad and it’s tragic.

Crime wise, it is certainly the most dangerous neighborhood in all of New York City.

Today, this part of Brooklyn is one of the most affordable neighborhoods you can live in New York City. But affordable to New York might not sound affordable to you. A single family home here ranges from $500 to $800,000 and a two-bedroom apartment is about $2k a month.

Overall, while Brownsville continues to struggle, Brooklyn isn’t THAT bad anymore. It’s actually getting gentrified at an alarming rate. There’s all these new big fancy new buildings sprouting up everywhere, and much of the west side of Brooklyn closer to the Brooklyn Bridge is much nicer than what we just saw 316

#NewYork #moving



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[TheGQBrotha]

I live in East New York, in these type of places including Brownsville, if you mind your business, no one will bother you for the most part, there are always exceptions of course. The crimes you hear about, majority are generally people who are out willingly getting involved in crime, be it drugs, gangs or whatever illegal activities.

[mjnyc]

All those parked cars -- things couldn't be all that bad.

[SomaraSon]

I worry for New York. I know it feels like a playground for the rich but the spread of poverty, homelessness, crime (esp petty crime) and drugs are EVERYWHERE now.

[II.am.Gold.]

I lived in Brownsville for a yr in 2019
.... i hated it. Im from Queens so im use to a certain calmness. Brownsville is bad but you couldnt pay me to live in the Bronx🤷🏾‍♀️

[eeverett]

This looks like a bustling working class neighborhood, not a dangerous slum. Open businesses with plate glass and no bars on the windows, decent looking cars on the street, not a boarded up building in sight.

A real no-go zone, would look like Harlem in the 1990s, vacant boarded up buildings, some with trees growing out of them, . Bums and drug dealers everywhere. The few businesses that are still open, have bars on the windows, some of them operate, behind bullet proof glass. Most open places are government social services. This place does not look that bad really. I wouldn't want to raise my kids there, but a daytime trip doesn't look so dangerous.

[marcelocoura]

Nice to see Action Kid was interviewed! Thanks so much for inviting him, Nick

[ianc]

NYC gets a lot of hate, this being one of the worst areas doesn't even look bad compared to some of the other cities in the us

[MATTY]

Compared to other deprived places I have seen on this and other YouTube channels. I would say Brownsville looks normal.
Some of those towns in the deep south and the rust belt are really depressing.

[superbrownbrown]

*Eight words:*

*Go at night, and not in the Winter.*

[Sonturist]

Brownsville is poor and working families. It’s not ritzy or glam, but mostly no one will bother you if you’re not in a gang or a criminal too. I don’t know who thought putting all this housing together was a good idea.

[patman]

Brownsville looks a lot nicer than other East coast cities bad parts of town (Philly, Baltimore, DC...). I am sure its still a rough place but there is not a lot of abandon homes, trash lots, and homeless.

[tonypapas]

As bad as this might look, it's NOTHING like East St. Louis, East Cleveland, much of Detroit, or even Camden. up with the eastsides being usually worse than the westsides in many cities? LOL

[Dangic]

I’m from Manhattan, and I can say that the most dangerous part of NYC is Wall Street.

[latriciaskeete]

I grew up in Brownsville/ENY in my grandparent's house in the late 1980s. They moved to FL and then my mom and I moved to East Flatbush and then we settled in East Flatbush/Canarsie. Brownsville is on the other side of Canarsie and I have never experienced anything negative going into Brownsville or surrounding areas. I now live in PA and watching your video has given me such a wave of nostalgia watching you drive through streets I know all too well. Thank you for this video and this comment was in no way a takeaway from those whose opinions and experiences might be very different from mine.

[henrycalde]

I do doordash once in a while in brooklyn and some orders i get offered take me to brownsville. Usually they never tip and order a lot of food, with redundant instructions like saying “walk up to the northleft building, walk down to the building, go in, type xx to be buzzed in, take the elevator to the left straight and go up to floor 19, make a left and go straight to the end, on the corner make a right and go down the hallway, leave the order in the front door” something like that. what shitty area.I delivered once there when i was starting and didnt know better and the moron said he never got the order even though i hand delivered it to him and took a pic of the apt number with the food in the other hand. That building smelled like piss and weed with guys sitting on the stairs drinking. No thanks. Generational poverty can be broken by graduating HS, getting a full time job and not having kids out of wedlock.

[mackereltabbie]

A city can't expect to function effectively if you don't have decent housing for people who earn a low-average wage

[Mack]

I grew-up in Brownsville and East New York (Van Dyke Projects, Howard Houses...) from 1975-1997, then I moved to Harlem. When I go through there now, it's entirely different than when I grew up. Like someone else mentioned, nowadays, if you mind your business, you'll be fine. That wasn't the case when I was there. I also grew-up during the "crack-years" so it was a very different time.

[MasterMalrubius]

This was a really good video. It relates a lot of information which we didn’t know. Your guests did a great job of giving the lowdown on how it really is. Their knowledge really helped give an understanding beyond what is in the news.

[lazycuntwhostillwantssubs]

You should interview Louis Rossman if you make another NYC video hes a independent business owner their and makes several videos on the real estate situation there. He also makes a lot of circuit board repair videos because that is his primary job.

[PraveenSrJ]

Thank you for all you do Nick. Your service is definitely very valuable😇.