This was a project I put together for fun while serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Kansas City. I had just returned from a conference that was attended by VISTAs around the region, and I was not surprised to learn that many had a difficult time finding a place to live given their VISTA stipend.
The issue of soaring rents and dwindling, affordable housing stock is not limited to those serving as VISTAs; it is a problem faced by the estimated 43 million Americans living in poverty, and millions more Americans who are hovering near the poverty line. VISTA incomes are derived from a national assessment of cost of living by county. Because I did not have access to the original cost of living data, I used the VISTA income data as a proxy. I compared this with nationwide county-level data on estimate rent and calculated what areas were most “affordable” for someone living on those wages. I made an interactive story map that showed what percentage of income by county a VISTA would have to spend to split a 2-br apartment.
I was saddened to learn that the underlying data for the story map was removed from the Unified Government’s ArcGIS site. I have only one old screenshot (the legend is located at the link below). The link to the story map is still available, but the data itself (which was fully interactive) is not visible: https://unifiedgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=2b2ac5b20b684 5ffab469abef78b1f50