Colour

A sequential ramp says “more of this”. A diverging ramp says “more and less than some centre”, which is a statement about the data and is false unless that centre is real. The two diverging palettes here are disabled for any measure with no genuine midpoint, and the reason is printed under the palette row.

Rent burden has a real centre. The Department of Housing and Urban Development counts a household as rent burdened when rent takes 30% or more of its income, so the diverging ramp is centred on 30 and a place’s colour says which side of that line its median falls on. In New York City, median gross rent is 30% or more of household income in 1,283 of 2,206 tracts with an estimate (58.2%, ACS 2019-2023).

Change the palette

Palette

Diverging, for change around zero. No party reading, unlike red–blue.

Change city, level or measure (now New York, census tract, rent burden)

City

Geography

Form

Proportional symbols unavailable: 2,324 tracts of circles overlap into a blob at this level. Available at borough, PUMA and ZIP code.

Measure

Median gross rent as a share of household income across 2,324 tracts

Equal-count bins

ACS 2023 5-year, table B25071 · boundaries: US Census cartographic, 2020 vintage · suppressed estimates are shown as no-data, not as zero