Newday Reprint: Staten Island Latinos are a growing number…
Census: Latinos look to Staten Island
- August 13, 2007
The county of salsa has consolidated its credentials as the borough where a majority of the population is Latino, but more and more Hispanics are finding their slice of suburbia a ferry ride away, on Staten Island, according to a study of Census data released yesterday.
The fastest-growing county since 1990, Staten Island is also the only one of New York’s five boroughs where in 2006 the Latino population increased at a pace – 3.5 percent – that mirrors the national rate.
The Bronx continued to have the most Latinos (712,866, or 51.2 percent of the borough’s population), followed by Queens (607,935 or 26.4 percent of residents), the study showed. Athough Staten Island still has the smallest Hispanic population – 73,000 out of a total of 459,000 – the study found that, between 2000 and 2006, Latinos increased their presence among the mostly white population by 32.7 percent.
“It’s really dramatic,” said Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, a nonprofit think tank based in Manhattan that based the study on Census data released last week.
“I think it’s mostly people moving from the city to a more suburban type area, and finally buying a house there,” he said.
Linda Nieves-Powell, president of Latino Flavored Productions, a theater production company in Staten Island, said that things have changed a lot since her family moved to the area in 1976. “I’ve noticed a big increase in Mexicans, but I also see more Dominican and Puerto Rican presence.”
She said seeing more Hispanics on Staten Island prompted her to set up a Web site, statenislandlatino.com, to establish “an outlet for us.”
Other boroughs with a more traditional and substantial Latino base, however, saw only a slight Hispanic population increase in 2006 – .6 percent in the Bronx and .3 percent in Queens.
Latino population continued a slow decline in Manhattan (1.2 percent) and in Brooklyn (.5 percent), which Falcón and others have attributed to a trickling exodus to the suburbs in Long Island, New Jersey and other parts of the country.
“The Latino community in New York appears to be shifting from those boroughs with the older Latino presence to Staten Island and Queens, which have the newer Latino population,” said Falcón.
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