The Town of Hempstead is the largest township in the United States at 1,426 square miles. It includes 22 incorporated villages and 50 unincorporated areas. A 2010 consensus recorded a population of 795,757. It would be best to focus on a microcosm of this township; Hempstead Village, or “The Hub.”
Hempstead Village is considerably small at 3.68 square miles but it has a population of 53,891 people, making it the most populated village in New York. Needless to say, the area is congested. As written in The New York Times (2008), the 1960’s construction of Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City ran shops out of business. CBS Local News recently reported the disdain that Hempstead residents are expressing over a possible expansion of Roosevelt Field and Green Acres Mall.
This gentrification process is taking place in many areas of the township. Supervisor Kate Murray expressed plans for sustainable projects in the Adopted Budget Report for 2013. These projects included bringing construction jobs, solar fueling stations, and a recreational center for special needs kids. Hempstead Village is underrepresented in this vision. Not all of Hempstead is at the forefront of sustainability. The village has other concerns such as gun violence.
Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network organized the Justice for Trayvon Martin Rally, a vigil held in 100 cities. On July 20th people in the community of Hempstead, predominantly clergy members, gathered with a message of “No justice, no peace.” The town also assembled for a peace rally for victims of gun violence.
It is important to take a closer look at the population of Hempstead Village. Within the township, the white race is the highest at 518,756. The total black population is 125,724. Twenty percent of the township’s black population is in Hempstead Village at 26,016. They are the most prevalent race, followed by Latinos at 23,823, Other at 12,284, and whites at 11,788. There is a small population of Asians, Native Americans, and mixed.
According to a 2013 consensus, the median age is 32 which is relatively young. However, a little over half of the population has a high school degree at 65 percent and only 16.5% have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. In 2009, the median household income blacks earned was between 10 and 20 thousand a year while whites earned between 60 and 75 thousand. In 2007, there were 3,594 firms that spanned the 3.8 square miles of the village. There may be a correlation between low motivation for higher education and a high esteem for entrepreneurship.
There is a disparity between the predominant black and Latino populations with males and females in the village. There are 10,945 family houses where 5,311 are husband-wife and 5,634 are considered “other.” The latter group is divided. There are 1,396 homes where there is a male who is without a wife while there are 4,238 homes headed by a female without a husband. It would be interesting to know if that number of single women were mothers raising their families without husbands. There are more Latino males in ratio to females at 13,008 to 10,815. Similarly, there are more black females to males at 14,463 to 11,553. Five percent of the population has remained mixed over the past few years. There may be a cultural bias between the races here with the black population adjusting to the influx of the Latino population. Almost half of the population now has a language other than English spoken in the home.
Many important questions and stories raised by your statistics? Failure of local schools to educate a diverse community for the workplace? Education sounds like it is a very big issue because so few of the minorities go on to college. Racial inequities in housing, work. Crime issues. To do these stories, you must make sure that you have a list of strong, credible sources.