Is Staten Island a Good Place to Live? Honest Pros, Cons & Things to Know Before Moving

Ask a Manhattan or Brooklyn resident about Staten Island and you’ll usually get one of two reactions: a shrug, or a joke about the ferry. It’s the least populated of New York City’s five boroughs, the only one with no subway connection to the rest of the system, and it’s been calling itself “the forgotten borough” for so long that the nickname has practically become part of its identity. The real question is simpler: is it a good place to live? The honest answer is that it depends what you’re looking for — but there’s a lot more to like here than its reputation suggests, and a few real drawbacks worth going in with your eyes open about.

What Is Staten Island Known For?

Staten Island is the third-largest of the five boroughs by land area, but by far the smallest by population — somewhere around 475,000 to 495,000 residents, compared to Brooklyn’s 2.6 million. It sits across New York Harbor from Manhattan and connects to Brooklyn via the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan via the free Staten Island Ferry.

What it doesn’t have is a subway, and that single fact has shaped almost everything about how the borough feels: more single-family homes, more driveways, more front yards, and a pace of life that’s genuinely closer to a suburb than to a New York City neighborhood. The “forgotten borough” label traces back largely to that transit isolation, along with a long-running sense among residents that city services and attention lag behind what the other boroughs get.

The Case for Living on Staten Island

Space is the biggest draw, and it’s not subtle. If you’ve spent any time apartment-hunting in Manhattan or even Brooklyn, a detached house with a driveway and a backyard inside city limits probably sounds like a fantasy.

On Staten Island, it’s just Tuesday.

That extra room comes with real green space to match. The Staten Island Greenbelt is one of the largest continuous stretches of parkland in the city, and Snug Harbor Cultural Center is an 83-acre campus of gardens, museums, and a botanical garden — the kind of amenity most NYC neighborhoods don’t have room for.

Add close to 15 miles of beach along the south and east shores, plus the Staten Island Zoo for families with young kids, and it starts to look less like a consolation prize and more like a genuinely different way to live in the same city.

It’s also, on average, the most affordable borough to rent or buy in — though “affordable” deserves a caveat. Home values and rents run meaningfully below Manhattan and Brooklyn, but the overall cost of living is still higher than the national average, the way it is almost everywhere in New York City. You’re saving relative to the other boroughs, not escaping New York prices altogether.

Then there’s the ferry, maybe the single most underrated thing about living here. It’s completely free, has run since 1905, and operates 24/7. The 25-minute ride gives you one of the best free views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Manhattan skyline anywhere in the city.

It’s also the busiest passenger-only ferry system in the world by ridership — not just scenic, but proof it actually works.

The Trade-Offs

The flip side of all that space is getting to and from it. Staten Island has no subway, so residents lean on the ferry, local buses, and the Staten Island Railway, which runs the length of the island but doesn’t connect anywhere off it.

Transit here has improved over the years, but it doesn’t come close to subway-level coverage. Most households end up owning a car out of necessity, not preference — budget for insurance, parking, and tolls if you’ve never needed one before.

The commute itself is the part people underestimate most. City transportation planners have acknowledged Staten Island residents have some of the longest commute times in the country, which is part of why a second, faster ferry route from St. George to Manhattan’s west side launched in 2021.

Realistically, getting into Manhattan means a roughly 25-minute ferry ride plus travel on either end, or driving across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and through Brooklyn — a route that turns unpredictable fast once the Staten Island Expressway hits rush hour.

Nightlife and dining thin out too. There are still bars, a comedy club, and solid neighborhood restaurants, but not the density or variety of Manhattan or Brooklyn. For some, that’s the whole point of moving here; for others, it’s what eventually sends them back across the water.

And then there’s the reputation itself. The “forgotten borough” nickname reflects a genuine, decades-long frustration among residents over slower storm response and less infrastructure investment. Whether that’s entirely fair is a separate conversation — but it’s worth knowing the sentiment exists.

Is Staten Island Safe?

By the numbers, yes — more so than any other borough in New York City. A 2025 crime analysis from Robert DeFalco Realty, citing 2024 data, put Staten Island’s serious crime rate at 6.6 incidents per 1,000 residents, less than half the citywide rate of 13.6 per 1,000, and lower than Brooklyn’s rate of 10.9 per 1,000 that same year. That’s a meaningful, consistent gap, not a one-year fluke.

It’s worth resisting the urge to round that up to “totally safe,” though. CrimeGrade.org’s broader analysis, which factors in property crime and lower-level offenses alongside violent crime, gives Staten Island an overall grade of C+ — right around the national average once you look past the violent-crime comparison alone, with an overall rate of roughly 23 incidents per 1,000 residents in a typical year.

A few categories, like felony assault, have ticked up in some recent reporting periods even as the borough’s overall standing stays strong.

Safety also isn’t evenly distributed across the island. The south shore — neighborhoods like Great Kills and Tottenville — is widely considered the safest and most suburban part of Staten Island, with noticeably lower crime rates than the denser, more urban north shore near the ferry terminal. If safety is high on your priority list, it’s worth researching at the neighborhood level rather than treating the whole borough as a single number.

Neighborhoods Worth Knowing

A few names come up again and again once you start looking seriously at Staten Island:

• Great Kills sits on the south shore near the water, with a marina, a quiet residential feel, and some of the borough’s lowest crime rates — a common pick for families.
• Todt Hill is one of the highest points on the entire East Coast, and it looks the part — larger homes, more elevation, a more upscale suburban character than most of the island.
• St. George, right around the ferry terminal, is the most urban and walkable part of Staten Island, and it’s home to Snug Harbor as well.
• New Dorp and South Beach put you within walking distance of the water, with direct beach access along the south and east shores.

The Staten Island Mall, on the island’s north-central side, is the borough’s main retail hub if that factors into where you want to land.

What Actually Changes When You Move Here

Once you’ve decided Staten Island is the right call, the move itself has a few wrinkles that a Manhattan-to-Brooklyn move wouldn’t.

If you’re coming from Brooklyn or New Jersey, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is your main route in, and it backs up predictably during peak hours — an early start on moving day goes a long way. If any part of your move touches Manhattan, the ferry runs frequently, but it’s still worth building in a schedule buffer rather than cutting it close.

And because so many Staten Island moves are into single-family homes rather than apartment buildings, the logistics often get simpler in one way (no elevator reservations, no narrow stairwells) while requiring a little more planning in another — confirming driveway width and street parking rules with your movers ahead of time, especially in the denser north shore neighborhoods.

For a full move-day timeline, our ultimate moving checklist walks through what to handle and when. And when you’re ready to book, our Staten Island movers already know the bridge traffic, the ferry schedule, and the borough’s mix of walk-ups and single-family homes firsthand.

Common Questions

Is Staten Island a good place to live?

For a lot of people, yes — particularly if more space, a quieter pace, and a lower cost of living matter more to you than nightlife or subway access. It really comes down to which trade-offs you’re willing to make.

Is Staten Island safe?

Relative to the rest of New York City, yes. It’s had the lowest serious crime rate of any borough in recent data, though safety still varies by neighborhood, with the south shore generally considered the safest.

How long is the ferry ride to Manhattan?

About 25 minutes each way, and it’s free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Is it expensive to live there?

It’s the most affordable of the five boroughs on average, but still pricier than the national average — the way most of New York City is.

Do I need a car?

Not in every case, but most residents have one. Without a subway, getting around comfortably usually means driving, even with the ferry and bus network in place.