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The above map depicts the percent of “affordable” housing in Connecticut. Affordable housing in Connecticut are developments that provide financial assistance to residents who would otherwise have difficulty paying for housing. On the map, the municipalities with a darker shade are those that provide more affordable housing than the municipalities with lighter shades. Hartford has the most developments that meet Connecticut’s criteria of affordable housing at 37.24 % and is followed by New Haven with 29% affordable housing. With Hartford providing so much affordable housing, it means there will be large concentrations of people with lower incomes in Hartford. Yet if we take a look at West Hartford, they only provide 5.61% of affordable housing. What this means is that Connecticut residents looking for affordable housing will most likely take residency in Hartford or New Haven because that is where the affordable housing is located. Many of the municipalities in Connecticut are not providing much affordable housing and it is creating a geographical divide between those with low incomes and those with high incomes.

Honestly, the creation of this map was more difficult than I imagined it would be. I will first layout a descriptive table and then I will give explanation as to why I made the choices I did.

The Red Areas: indicate that no data was available for zoning restriction for this area.

The Darkest Areas: indicate the largest amount of land required by the zoning laws, specific to geographic area, for the allowance of multifamily housing construction. (Think most prohibitive for land developers to build affordable housing in these communities.)

The Lighter to Lightest Areas: indicate smaller amounts of land needed for the allowance of multifamily constructive. (Think least restrictive for developers.)

Explanation:

Although, it seems I may have wanted to remove town that did not have any data to avoid the red blocks, it an inconclusive map when I did. There appeared to be questionable ‘holes’ in the map and at quick glance, it was not apparent as to why these holes were there. Leaving them red allows me the ability to quickly alert the view that no data is available for these locations.  I also thought that examination of the “no data areas” might also be interesting to some.

I then chose to use the gradient colors between black and white because I am using Google fusion. The span between black and white allows for the largest number of shade possibilities. It is also a good contrast to the red, no data areas.

The next parts are confusing. I honestly believe that this map should be viewed along side the spreadsheet table of data because the variance of allowable square footage is so wide (0 sq ft – 653400 sq ft).

So, my goal was to show discrepancy “at a glance”. I am hoping the Fair Housing Authority will be able to use the map as a teaching tool, so by showing discrepancy easily I choose to include five gradients, rather than multiple gradients that only differed slightly from town to town. This seemed most effective to show extremes, i.e.; Bloomfield in comparison to Hartford.

* In addition: I attempted to change the representation of data values several times in a hope to get a closer margin from 0 sq ft to 653400 sq ft. I attempted using percentages of 653400, and scientific notation. These did not help. Perhaps an arbitrary ratio assigned to specific data would work. 6000sq ft allowable land is = to 1 whereas 300,000 sq ft of land is equal to 5.

The interactive map above represents the percentage of housing stock in each municipality rated affordable. Clicking on a specific area will create a text box indicating both the municipality’s name and percentage of affordable housing. Gray areas indicate municipalities with less than 5% affordable housing. The other municipalities are varying shades of red. This sliding color scale indicates the more affordable housing stock available. Darker colors indicate municipalities where a larger percentage of housing is defined as affordable. For example, we know that within the City of Hartford, represented by a dark red in the center of the map, about 37% of housing is deemed “affordable.” This map does not include every Connecticut municipality. “Affordability” is defined under the Connecticut Statute 8-30g.