Lower West Side Eviction Risk: High

The poverty rate is 52%, which shows up in this model as reduced rent-recovery odds after a judgment. The dominant input is economic stress at 9.8/10.

Annualized rent equals 45% of average household income here, past the 30% affordability line, which compresses the margin any screening standard has to work with. 32% are severely burdened, paying half their income or more in rent. That cohort has no absorption capacity for an unexpected bill, and it is where non-payment filings originate. SNAP participation is 40.3% of households versus 15.2% nationally.

This is a renter market: 87% of occupied units are tenant-occupied. Food insecurity affects 38.4% of adults, 20.6 points above the national rate. Sitting well above the midpoint is eviction-process difficulty at 8/10.

On the high side is rent-regulation exposure at 7.5/10. Average gross rent is $938, 10% below the Buffalo average of $1,046.

That places it #1 of 21 neighborhoods in Buffalo. For a like-for-like read, Fruit Belt and East Side score within a fraction of it.

Social vulnerability runs high at 9.5/10, concentrating the disaster- and displacement-exposure this model treats as a lagging risk input. The 3 tracts here are tightly clustered, 0 points apart at the extremes.

With little internal variation, 9.3/10 is a fair proxy for any address inside the boundary. Scores move when the ACS release, the court-record feed, or the statute ledger behind them moves.