Who's Left Out of New York City's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Plan?

One of the biggest initiatives of Mayor Bill De Blasio's progressive administration is to stem the tide of unaffordable housing and families losing their housing due to affordability. As of March 22, City Council has approved the mayor's mandatory inclusionary housing program that will require a larger share of new housing to be affordable. 'Option 1,' specifically is the most prevalent feature, requiring a minimum of 10% of new housing to be affordable at 40% of the city's adjusted median income, or AMI ($31,080 for a household of three).

Unfortunately, many of the city's residents cannot even reach that level. My partners, Adam Shrier and Doha Madani researched the income levels for every community district and public use microdata area (PUMA) to see how many residents make under 40% of the city's AMI. It turns out nearly 1 million of New York City's 8 million residents fall below that level, mostly in the South Bronx, East Harlem, and East Brooklyn. Check out our interactive map and more analysis by clicking here.

How Are New York City's Pre-K Programs Performing?

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected on a progressive platform promising many things, specifically universal pre-kindergarten education for all 4 year-olds living in the city. That was three years ago. Now that the Pre-K For All program has been running for two full fiscal years, we can begin to measure it's effectiveness. Check out the map I created showing the ECERS-R scores of over 1,100 New York City pre-kindergarten programs. Click here.

Half-Baked Ideas

So, if you really know me, you know one thing about me: I have a lot of ideas, many of which don't pan out. I constantly am scheming up ideas for articles, essays, books, novels, startups, apps, and the like, but they frequently peter out due to a number of factors.

Sometimes it's lack of technical know-how keeping me from creating the new toilet or developing the world's hottest social network. Sometimes it's the rose-colored glasses I see my ideas with finally falling off and exposing them for the insanity they truly are. Sometimes - especially with writing - it's a problem of ambition, where I want to do something with 500 words that should only be attempted with thousands. A good amount of the time, it's because of writer's block mixed with lack of confidence in what I'm writing. But most of the time, it's because coming up with an idea is way easier than executing it.

Half-baked ideas suck because they're always a mark of what could have been, not what is. And in my case, it sucks even more because I end up with this: a 20 title-long list of Medium articles I've started but never finished. They range from political diatribes to listicles about hip-hop pet peeves to personal essays about encounters with the police. But they're ALL unfinished. Most didn't make it past 100 words. A few are close to completion, but are missing that one paragraph or sentence or word or whatever to make them whole. 

That brings me to the point of post. I typically don't like New Year's resolutions because they imply that the beginning of a new year is the only time to try and improve oneself. Why should the beginning of a calendar year be the beginning of improvement? Shouldn't improvement be something you strive for daily, and not just think about on December 31st? Regardless, as I prepare to start my second semester in journalism school, I realize there's no time better than the present to get better. So, to that end, I'm fully cooking my half-baked ideas.

What does that mean? Firstly, it means I have a lot of writing to do. I'm going to finish each of the pieces I've started on Medium. Whether that means actually hitting 'Publish' on them or scrapping them or incorporating them into something bigger, is something only time will tell. Secondly, it means I'm going to purge a lot of the crazy ideas I've littered these two notebooks with. They deserve better than to collect dust on my desk after housing my inane ramblings for years. Purging them could take years, but it'll be well worth it to see whether the Everic of 2010-2013 had anything worth it's weight in ink.

I want to hold myself accountable for starting something and finishing it. That's always been my achilles heel, and now I'm sharing it with you, whoever you are reading this. If you see me in the streets, or follow me on any number of the social media platforms I use, ask me how my half-baked ideas are going. I'm pretty sure I'll respond with something vague or silly, but the added pressure of publicly stating my goals is something I won't take lightly. Check the blog in the coming hours, days, weeks, and months for updates. Here's to not disappointing you, or more importantly, myself.

I work at The Guardian US!

If you love great journalism, then you already know about The Guardian, one of the world's oldest newspapers still in circulation. It started in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and as of 2011, has ramped up their publishing in the United States as The Guardian US.

The paper is famous for being the first to break Edward Snowden's revelations about the United States' mass data collection, as well as for its feature The Counted, which tracks the number of United States citizens murdered by police.

Now that you know about The Guardian, you should also know I work there! I'm now the Engagement Intern with the Audience Engagement team. I'll be working with them to strategically grow their digital audience via social media, email marketing, search engine optimization, and a number of other industry terms only someone who spends their time looking at Excel grids knows about.

I'll be sure to keep you updated, but if you want to reach me at The Guardian, hit me at everic.white@guardian.co.uk

Glendale, the Patriotic

Residential neighborhoods always tend to hold the best shots for me. You get to see people in their ‘natural habitats’, so to speak. On a recent afternoon in Glendale, I noticed a pattern. Queens may be New York Jets territory, but may well be a Patriots bastion considering the sheer number of American flags I caught. This shot exemplified that fact perfectly, with each house showing their USA pride via a hanging flag.