The Department of Health Portal provides an amazing range of data regarding the quality of New York City’s neighborhoods, in an attempt to inform the public about how “safe” their neighborhoods really are.
While New York City has an average of 6.6% of households that are boarded up, Brooklyn has by far the highest rate of boarded up households at 10.9%. The 99,292 boarded up households in Brooklyn represent close to half of the total boarded up houses in NYC, which is 201,374 households, and the 8,088 boarded up households in Staten Island represent a significantly smaller percentage of households in NYC. This implies that Brooklyn’s total number of households and population density may be higher than other boroughs, in addition to noting “normal” levels of boarded up households in every other borough and much higher levels in Brooklyn.
Based on this graph, one can observe that highest levels of households in deteriorating or dilapidated buildings and poverty were in 2008, when a recession occurred, leaving many New Yorkers in poor households and poverty according to this graph. The good news is that poverty levels decreased from 10.8% to 8.5% from 2008 to 2011, returning to close to 2005 levels at 8.1%; however, high poverty and deteriorating buildings remain a huge concern for NYC neighborhoods, with the highest levels in each year in the “High Poverty” category.
Apparently, there is a positive correlation between 3 or more reported maintenance deficiencies and carbon monoxide incidents. While the majority of neighborhoods are scattered at the left-hand side of the graph with low rates of incidence on both axes, high levels of carbon monoxide incidents occur between 10 to 20 reported maintenance deficiencies: although the graph starts out proportionally, data on the y-axis (carbon monoxide incidents) increases at a high rate while data on the x-axis progresses accordingly. Additionally, one can conclude from this graph that neighborhoods with high levels of maintenance deficiencies in the home are associated with relatively high levels of carbon monoxide incidents, despite it being unlikely that the highest levels of both variables occur at the same time.
Over time, households with peeling paint in pre-1960 buildings have decreased in New York City from 1999 to 2008. However, Queens and the Bronx have had a steady level of households with peeling paint, whereas every other borough has had significant drops at some point in the graph. Also, Staten Island remains well below every other borough – so there could be a positive relation between households with peeling paint in pre-1960 buildings and population density.
This graph tells us that in 2008, households requiring a secondary source of heat occurred most severely in the northernmost parts of New York City, mainly in the Bronx and Flushing/Whitestone. Also, more households that require a secondary source of heat exist in the middle of Brooklyn, around Bedford-Stuyvesant, and overall most neighborhoods require a secondary source of heat at levels above 10%.
