Download my data files
Want to see the data I used to make “Half My Money Goes to Rent” and “English Classes Needed”? Just click on the title of this post to go to an Excel file I’ve shared on Google Drive.
This isn’t exactly the same file I used to make my map and scatterplot because my original files point to 18 other Excel files I have saved to my computer—the data tables for all 18 Brooklyn community districts from Brooklyn College. To make this file I’m sharing, I pasted as values the columns that originally pointed to other files in my laptop. The file is otherwise the same as the ones I used.
Brooklyn College collected the original statistics from several U.S. Census reports, including American Community Surveys, which the U.S. House of Representatives voted to eliminate this spring.
The college has already published many helpful graphs of their data, which you can see in their Issuu and PDF links. I wanted to find patterns you can’t immediately see in the original reports. I used Excel just to do some simple math on the data and to correlate different types of data. Actually, it was a quick, ugly Excel graph I made that first showed me how well median household incomes and percent of households paying more than half their income on rent are correlated. That’s a trend you’ll see nationwide and worldwide, I’m sure, but I still thought it was remarkable to see.
Hope this was helpful! Let me know if you do anything else with my tables, with Brooklyn College’s original data tables, or if you find anything you have questions about.
Click the graph to enlarge (slightly)
For many households in Brooklyn, it’s no exaggeration to say that half their income goes to rent. In most community districts, a little less than a third of the households are paying 50 percent or more of their incomes to rent. Putting away such a large portion of their earnings into housing makes it harder for these households to save.
The burden falls heaviest on Brooklyn’s less affluent districts, as those districts with lower median incomes also tend to have higher proportions of households paying 50 percent or more in rent.
Check community district numbers in the map from “English Classes Needed” to find where neighborhoods fall in the chart. Visit the About page to learn about the underlying data.
English Classes Needed
Like the rest of New York City, Brooklyn enjoys brilliant diversity, a trait New Yorkers rightly celebrate. Many households are in desperate need of English language learning services, however. Overall, 18 percent of households in Brooklyn didn’t have anyone age 14 or older who checked that they can speak English “very well” in the 2007-2009 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. In four community districts, a third or more of households don’t have English-speaking adults.
Adults who don’t speak English well may have trouble working with their children’s teachers; understanding public announcements, such as subway route changes and severe weather warnings; enrolling their families in benefits they qualify for and consenting to medical procedures. They are barred from higher education in the U.S. and most well-paying jobs.
Multilingual consent forms and park signs help with many of the challenges non-English-speakers face. But for the long-term benefit for the family, adults need access to English language classes.
Click on a community district to learn more. Visit the About page to learn about the underlying data.
