"A tool for seeing each other, our neighbors, in our experience of gentrification." - @allthesignals
Inspired by the continuing gentrification and displacement in Boston.
This map will be a tool for understand rents across the city, and how much landlords and realtors profit off of rents.
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Create a GeoJSON tile layer from the statewide parcel database. The tile layer should include attributes ID and Address.
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Create a JSON API (using Rails) that will fetch attribute data from the database for a given parcel ID or coordinate.
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Build a front-end application that implements the following workflow:
- Scroll across the map or enter your address.
- Click on your parcel.
- A window pops up with the address. Confirm that this is your address, or cancel and find the correct parcel.
- Confirm the number of units, or edit the number.
- Check whether someone else has entered your unit. If so, you can still contribute your information.
- Enter your unit's floor area. (Direct them to where this might be found on a lease.)
- Enter the rent for your unit, or for the whole building if you know it.
- Enter the monthly cost of utilities your landlord pays for (usually water, sometimes electricity).
- Enter the cost of repairs, renovations, or other services your landlord provides.
- (Optionally) Enter your email if you want to learn of any findings that come out of the data.
- View a summary of data, including an estimate (with methodology) of how much your landlord earns in rent, and how much profit they make after property taxes, utilities, and repairs.
- Might use splash images from unsplash.it, probably just city-themed ones:
- Parcels will be each assigned one of a set very vibrant colors. When a parcel has no user-contributed data, it is completely grayscale (unsaturated). It gets more saturated as a function of the proportion of units for which users contribute data. Data-rich areas will be brilliant, whereas data-poor areas will be bland.