In 2000, there were 1,394 Section 8 voucher households in Williamsburg’s nine census tracts where 40% or more of the population over 5 years old spoke Yiddish at home. By 2014, there were 12 such tracts housing 3,296 voucher households.
In Part 2 of our series on Section 8 in New York City, WNYC reporter Cindy Rodriguez and freelance investigative reporter Lisa Riordan Seville look at how Section 8 has helped the Hasidic community grow in Williamsburg.
More than 80% of Section 8 tenants in NYC now live in high-poverty areas, up from 2009. WNYC reporter Cindy Rodriguez and freelance investigative reporter Lisa Riordan Seville look at how the pressures of a heating housing market may be a reason why.
Last year, Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8) provided rent assistance to 123,000 New York City households. Section 8 in New York City has grown by more 50% since 2000, but budget cuts and rising rents raise questions about the stability of the program. Listen to Part 1 of our series with our interactive map and read the story in the New York Daily News.
Yesterday we published a story on a little brown bird struggling to hang on, the Saltmarsh Sparrow, at risk of extinction because of rising sea levels. We contacted the National Audubon Society and received data on all the New York bird species at risk of losing their ranges during the Summer nesting season. We were surprised to see so many ducks, including the Mallard, and birds like the Common Raven that we didn’t know were at risk. We made a graphical chart showing which birds have lost the most range, the birds at the top being those with the most loss.
Nailbiter Bot tweets whenever a NCAA men’s or women’s basketball tournament game is close near the end. Never miss a game that is going down to the wire!
A game counts as close if:
* The score is within 8 points with between 1:30 and 3:00 left on the clock
* The score is within 6 points with between :30 and 1:30 left on the clock
* The score is within 4 points in the last 30 seconds
You can follow along on Twitter, but if you use the Twitter app for iOS or Android, you can also get mobile notifications whenever Nailbiter Bot tweets:
If you’d like to learn how we created Nailbiter Bot in 2014, check out our Source blog post here.
The NYPD is updating a map of serious crimes in New York City, but what does the map not tell us? Sarah Gonzalez and Noah Veltman discuss.
From 1936 to 1966, a Harlem postal worker named Victor Green published the Green Book, a travel guide that listed businesses where black travelers were welcome. The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has digitized almost every edition of the Green Book and NYPL Labs has visualized these guides.
The NYC Department of Education announced yesterday that the city’s high school graduation rate topped 70% - that’s the 4-Year August graduation rate. We look at the 4-Year June graduation rate. Look up your school’s 4-Year June graduation rate here.
There are 14,066 known contaminated sites in New Jersey. Most are in the process of being remediated by private contractors, but 1,464 (10.4%) of the sites don’t have any cleanup plan in place. These sites are disproportionately located in low-income and communities of color. Listen to Sarah Gonzalez’s story, “Dirty Little Secrets: New Jersey’s Poorest Live Surrounded by Contamination.” Look up, and let us know about contaminated sites in New Jersey using our map.
A little more than three years after Sandy hit, progress in construction through the city’s “Build it Back” program varies by neighborhood. Construction has begun on 10.9% of projects with a City-hired contractor in Broad Channel, 70% of projects in Midland Beach, Staten Island. Citywide, about a third of owners who have applied for construction help have seen work begin.
