New York’s Climate Act created a Climate Justice Working Group in recognition of the fact that climate change doesn’t affect all communities equally. The Climate Act charged the Climate Justice Working Group with the development of criteria to identify disadvantaged communities to ensure that frontline and otherwise underserved communities benefit from the state’s historic transition to cleaner, greener sources of energy, reduced pollution and cleaner air, and economic opportunities. 

The Climate Justice Working Group approved the criteria for designation of Disadvantaged Communities (DAC) in March 2023. Disadvantaged communities are those that bear the burdens of negative public health effects, environmental pollution, impacts of climate change, and possess certain socioeconomic criteria, or comprise high-concentrations of low- and moderate- income households. Disadvantaged communities are identified at the Census Tract level.

The Census Tract that includes Ludlow Park as well as neighboring Census Tracts have been designated disadvantaged communities based on geographic, public health, environmental hazard, and socioeconomic criteria, which include: 

1. Areas burdened by cumulative environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to negative public health effects;
 
2. Areas with concentrations of people that are of low income, high unemployment, high 
rent burden, low levels of home ownership, low levels of educational attainment, or 
members of groups that have historically experienced discrimination based on race or 
ethnicity; and

3. Areas vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Following are the scores of the Ludlow Park Census Tract on the key indicators used to designate it as a Disadvantaged Community (DAC).

All material on this page is extracted from the Climate Justice Working Group's website: 
https://climate.ny.gov/Resources/Climate-Justice-Working-Group