March 17, 2015
Thank you for joining our blog series, which explores CCC’s Community Risk Ranking in greater detail. So far, we have examined the economic security data and what they tell us about life for at-risk children in New York City. For our next entry, we will focus on the housing domain.
A safe and stable home environment is key to children’s healthy development. The housing domain included in the Community Risk Ranking is composed of three indicators that measure the housing security of communities: the share of rent burdened households, rental overcrowding, and the rate of families entering homeless shelters. To understand the housing domain, we will focus on the data from East New York (K05), the highest risk community in Brooklyn and the 6th highest risk community overall in the housing domain.
The data from the housing domain demonstrate that children and their families face significant challenges to securing affordable, adequate and stable housing. We are encouraged that Mayor de Blasio’s administration has made housing issues a priority with proposals aimed at growing the City’s affordable housing stock and preventing homelessness, as well as helping families prevent eviction and transition from emergency shelter to permanent housing. We also support the City’s continued commitment to helping families earn more adequate incomes, including efforts to raise the minimum wage and increase access to transportation and job opportunities through strengthened community infrastructures.
We’ll continue to leverage our data to call attention to the need for increased investments in programs and services that have proven effective to keep families in their homes and help those families that are homeless access safe shelter and secure and permanent housing with appropriate after-care supports. Please continue to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay up to date.
[1] Figures are based analysis from: United States Census Bureau. (2015). 2012 American Community Survey, Summary Table: Year-Estimates [Data file]. Retrieved from: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t