Greenpoint is an epicenter of intense and uncontrolled gentrification that has left longtime residents and institutions scrambling for affordable housing. According to a study from NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the adjoining areas of Williamsburg and Greenpoint were the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city between 1990 and 2014. To qualify as gentrified, a neighborhood must meet 2 criteria: (1) it must have been "low income" in 1990, meaning its household income was in the bottom 40 percent of the city’s neighborhoods; and (2) since 1990, the neighborhood’s rents had to have increased faster than the median rate of increase for the city. From 1990 to 2014, average rents citywide "went up about 22.1 percent," while rent in Greenpoint "more than tripled that rate of increase, to 78.7 percent." This boom in gentrification was precipiated by a 2005 rezoning change that allowed for the construction of high-rise, luxury buildings in the area. [citation]