Affordable Housing in Boston

This final project was created for a course I took in graduate school, Using Data in Organizations. For this project, I created data visualizations and a policy recommendation based on efficacy of affordable housing creation and growth in Boston. I conducted my own calculations based on residential and population data from the City of Boston, maps from open source arcGIS files, and from national housing numbers from the HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) to measure whether or not Boston was meeting the numerical growth of residents in high-need neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester.

All data visualizations below were created in Tableau.

Nancy Chen - Final Project (1).pdf

Heat map of affordable housing

This heat map was created using an open source arcGIS map of Boston. Using color coded gradients based on the housing density in all areas of the Greater Boston area, this map shows the number of affordable housing units in Boston in 2018.

Comparison bar graph

This bar chart compares the number of households that qualify for affordable housing in Dorchester and Roxbury in 2019.

Bar chart of housing in 2018 versus 2021

This comparison shows the increase in number of units from 2018 to 2021. Measured against 2019 numbers of households that need affordable housing, the efficacy of affordable housing increases and legislative policy put in place to increase housing is ineffective.