[4] Residents of Kiryas Joel, like those of other Haredi and Orthodox Jewish communities, typically have large families, and this has driven rapid population growth.

Monroe town officials initially expressed skepticism over Teitelbaum's and his followers' plans to build multi-family housing in Kiryas Joel, but they eventually allowed the village to incorporate in 1976.

[14][15] On July 1, 2018, governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill to create Palm Tree, triggering elections for the first governing board.

The village abides by strict Jewish customs, and its welcome sign, which was installed in 2010,[27] asks visitors to dress conservatively and to "maintain gender separation in all public areas".

[29] A 2011 New York Times report noted that, despite the town's very high statistical poverty rates, "It has no slums or homeless people.

[citation needed] Local transit within the area is operated by the Village of Kiryas Joel Bus System, and also has service to Manhattan and to the heavily Haredi Jewish-populated Williamsburg and Borough Park sections of Brooklyn.

[32] Unlike most other small communities, it lacks a real downtown and much of it is given over to residential property, which has mostly taken the form of contemporary townhouse-style condominiums.

Other concerns of the surrounding communities are the impact on local aquifers and the projected increased volume of sewage reaching the county's sewerage treatment plants, already near capacity by 2005.

[34] In March 2007, the village of Kiryas Joel sued the county to stop it from selling off 1 million US gallons (3,800 m3) of excess capacity at its sewage plant in Harriman.

[35] In its action, Kiryas Joel accused the county of inconsistently claiming limited capacity in its suit when it is selling the million gallons to three communities outside its sewer district.

Kiryas Joel then sought to annex 510 acres (210 ha) of land into their village and the new Monroe Town Board has had no comment on this issue.

[citation needed] In the 2020 presidential election, 98.5% of Kiryas Joel voters voted for Trump, one of the highest percentages in the country.

[41] In the early 1990s, the New York State Police responded many times to the village, which has a generally low crime rate otherwise, when self-described dissidents reported harassment such as broken windows and graffiti containing profanity on their property.

[40] "Someone not following breaks down the whole system of being able to educate and being able to bring up our children with strong family values", Weider told The New York Times in 1992.

[41] After the election, a state court ruled that Waldman's children had to be reinstated at the yeshiva, an action that was only taken after the judge held Teitelbaum in contempt and fined him personally.

Friction continued as some of the dissidents banned from the synagogue circulated a petition calling for the polls to be moved to a neutral location.

It originally drew 150 signatures, but all but 15 retracted their names after being threatened with excommunication by the grand rabbi, signing a document that they had not actually read the petition.

One of the dissidents who signed was attacked while praying, and state troopers had to be called in again to disperse a mob that gathered on Waldman's lawn and broke his windows.

[40] In November 2017, a local divorce mediator and an Israeli rabbi with ties to the village were involved in the planning of a contract killing on an estranged husband.

[42] On four occasions since 1990, the Middletown Times-Herald Record has run lengthy investigative articles on claims of electoral fraud in the village.

In some cases, ballots were cast by people who seemed to reside in Antwerp, Belgium, without a set date of expected return, and, thus, would not be allowed under New York law to vote in any election for state or local office.

That article led to a county grand jury investigation in 2001, which concluded that while procedures were not followed, and many mistakes were made, there was no evidence of deliberate intent to violate the law.

They further alleged that election inspectors in the polling place, a banquet hall where 6,000 residents voted, sometimes gave the voters ballots before the signatures could be checked.

Coleman told the Record that while he had been at the banquet hall in question, he had only insisted that poll watchers state the reason for their challenges, as legally required, and had left after two hours.

[44] After the election, United Monroe members found more than 800 voters in Kiryas Joel whose signatures did not match those on file, in addition to 25 they had challenged at the polls, three of whom were later investigated by the county sheriff; the rest were considered unfounded.

Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, elected along with Neuhaus, told the newspaper it was difficult to investigate the allegations, since they could not verify the identity of either signer, if, in fact, there were two.

The resulting poverty rate makes a disproportionate number of families in Kiryas Joel eligible for welfare benefits, when compared to the rest of the county.

The New York Times wrote, Because of the sheer size of the families (the average household here has six people, but it is not uncommon for couples to have 8 or 10 children), and because a vast majority of households subsist on only one salary, 62 percent of the local families live below poverty level and rely heavily on public assistance, which is another sore point among those who live in neighboring communities.

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet that the Kiryas Joel School District, which covered only the village, was designed in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because the design accommodated one group on the basis of religious affiliation.

[48] Further litigation has resulted over what entity should pay for the education of children with disabilities in Kiryas Joel, and over whether the community's boys must ride buses driven by women.