Story
Habitat’s focus changed from mainly building homes inside of Hartford, to having the priority to build homes in the outlying towns. Which makes you ask why?
To answer that question, we needed to collect as much data as we can, not only for the past years, but, the past decades, to notice how the rate of building changes through the years inside and outside of Hartford and see what story the data is trying to narrate, Which is exactly what we did using a bunch of resources and some help from community partners that provided us with the data that we needed. Moreover, we used these resources to come up with our accurate and reliable resources that are a collective version of the original resources, such as Hartford habitat home
At first, you might think that "why" is the question that needs to be answered, why is the focus shifting and why would someone care about that, but when you take a deeper look into the data, charts, and the outcomes, you tend to find a more important question, which is "how", how would this data and the visualization of it help moving forward and be useful for future steps?.
Looking at the charts below, you can clearly see how both charts have different distributions of data. For instance, we see a significant difference between the homes built in the 90s inside and outside of Hartford (blue section), Which tell a part of the story that the data is trying to narrate, that when Habitat first started, they were focused more on building homes in Hartford compared to other towns outside of Hartford.
Figure 1: Explore the interactive chart to see the number of houses built outside of hartford throughout the last 3 decades.
Figure 2: Explore the interactive chart to see the number houes built inside Hartford throughout the last 3 decades.
The focus is shifing from building homes inside of Hartford to building homes in outlying towns
Another way of approaching the data is seeing the ratio of homes we have inside Hartford to the homes we have in outlying towns through the last 3 decades. As shown above, the ratio is nearly reversed, which shows how Habitat’s focus changed from mainly building homes inside of Hartford, to having the priority to build homes in the outlying towns. Which makes you ask why?
Map version of the data
Although the same data is being used for that visualization, sometimes showing the data in different ways emphasizes the story and answers more questions. Moreover, it can make it easier for visual people to address the story and interpret it.
Looking at the maps below, you can clearly see how focused Habitat was to buikding homes inside Hartford in the early 1990s, and through out the years, they started, not just expanding, but shifting the focus to helping and building homes outside of Hartford..
figure 4: where habitat homes where built from 1990-1999.
figure 5: where habitat homes where built from 2000-2009.
figure 6: where habitat homes where built from 2010-2019.