SO FRESH & SO CLEAN
NYC’s safest ’hood isn’t where you’d expect
COMPLAINTS about traffic and garbage are so 1999 compared to the threats facing New Yorkers these days. Right now, floods, fires, poxes and vermin seem to be in vogue — and for many denizens of the Greatest City in the World, it feels like only a matter of time until the next fill-in-the-blank catastrophe strikes.
Safety is now an issue that weighs heavily on the minds of buyers and renters when it comes time to move, real estate experts told The Post.
“Home has never been more important, and we’re seeing safety ranking as one of the top factors in rent renewals,” said Lily Liu, CEO at Piñata, a rental membership and rewards platform.
But not every neighborhood faces the same threats. So, in a quest to identify the safest ’hood in all of NYC, The Post compiled and compared neighborhood data on everything from flood zones, crime rates, proximity to hospitals, 911 response times, evacuation routes, average temperature and green spaces and even rats per capita.
While lots of neighborhoods stood out, one unexpected area took the cake. That neighborhood is — drumroll — Fresh Meadows.
That small slice of Queens, sandwiched between the Long Island Expressway, Union Turnpike, Cunningham Park and 164th Street, beats out every other part of the city in terms of safety and quality of life our data shows.
For instance, while NYC overall witnessed its second-wettest summer on record with 24.25 inches of rain — causing massive flooding that did billions in damage and turned subway stations into rat aquariums — Fresh Meadows stayed (relatively) dry. That’s because the neighborhood lies outside of the major flood zones, according to city data. Sitting at 72 feet above sea level, it isn’t the highest elevation