Kiryas Joel at rock bottom—on paper
(NEWSER) - Kiryas, NY, doesn’t look like the poorest place in America. The village has no slums, no homeless people, and pretty much no crime. Yet a whopping 70% of Kiryas Joel's 21,000 residents are below the federal poverty line, and its median family income is just $17,929, making it far and away the poorest place in America—at least statistically, according to the New York Times . But Kiryas is an odd place; it’s populated predominantly by ultra-orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews, most of whom speak almost exclusively Yiddish. More»
