A Data-Driven Approach to Being an NYC Councilmember

Objective

Effectively prioritizing the needs of the 150,000+ people living in District 7 of New York City is by no means an easy task for a City Councilmember and his staff. However, with the advent of NYC Open Data, we can get a more detailed breakdown of the common complaints in a district using real-time data that is freely available to the public. This report aims to support the policy research and development pipeline for Council District 7 by providing the following information:

• Top Complaints in District 7 by 311 Complaint Types
• Top Complaints in District 7 by Agency
• Maps of Key Complaints in District 7

Approach

We will be using a public dataset that contains “All 311 Service Requests from 2010 to present”, which is made freely available in adherence to Local Law 47 of 2005. You may download the dataset from NYC Open Data by clicking here.

Now place yourself in the shoes of the newly elected Councilmember of District 7. You are interested in tackling unsolved, widespread policy issues in order to increase your visibility in the community and achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Given this focus, we filter the data, limiting the number of observations to open complaints created after 1/1/14, the beginning of your term.

Moreover, since we are most interested in issues that affect Council District 7, we also filter complaints by zip codes that fall within district lines - namely, 10025, 10027, 10030, 10031, 10032. While this is not a perfect method to isolate District 7 issues (we could refine our approach by clipping observations that do not fall within the District 7 shapefile, this is sufficient for our ends.

All in all, this brings the total number of 311 complaints in District 7 from 1/1/14 to 7/15/14 to 10,926 complaints.

Summary Statistics

First, let’s group by complaint type and see what our top 10 hits are:

Paint/Plaster, Unsanitary Conditions, Plumbing - these are chracteristic housing & building issues, which is likely overrepresented. After all, this is NYC we’re talking about here. Let’s check out the number of complaints by agency. If our suspicions are correct, we should see a huge spike for the Commission on Housing and Preservation (HPD), the agency that deals with these issues:

Almost 7 out of 10 complaints are HPD-related! That warrants a breakdown. Let’s look at HPD complaints based on each individual Descriptor, a variable that offers more details on the complaint.

Wall, Ceiling, Floor - much of these complaints are regarding structural damage to places of residence. Pests and Mold are also common complaints, which falls under the Unsanitary Conditions category.

Housing & building issues are notoriously tough to deal with when creating policy solutions. Short of fixing it up ourselves and pressuring the landlords, there is little a Councilmember can do to help on a macro level. If our goal is to identify actionable issues to build policy around, then perhaps it would be better to revisit our top hits after filtering out the HPD-related issues:

Ah, more variety! Rodents - an issue perpetuated by poor sanitation and associated with poor quality-of-life - is apparently a huge problem in our district. Also listed in our top hits are out-of-service elevators and complaints regarding graffiti. If we can identify these problem locations (which will we do at the end of this report), we can earn some easy yet massively effective wins for District 7.

However, let’s take a closer look at our top hit: Noise. This is a pretty broad category. What kind of noise are people complaining about?

Noise: Construction before/after hours is by far the most prominent non-HPD related problem in our district (followed by ice cream trucks with their endlessly looping song of doom). As such, it may be in District 7’s best interest for the Councilmember to push policy that aims to crackdown on construction conducted during restricted hours and/or limits times allowed for construction work.

Mapping Key Issues

Because each complaint comes with an incident address, it is possible to map issues across District 7 to uncover spatial trends. Particularly, we want to know where these issues are happening so we can isolate problem areas and deploy our staff and resources effectively for targeted outreach.

For this section, we will focus on mapping three issues that would stand to gain the most from a spatial analysis (determined by level of importance, ease of developing a solution):

• Rodents
• Noise
• Street Conditions

Rodents

Rodents were largely classified by 311 as Rat Sightings or Mouse Sightings. Large clusters of complaints occurred at the following locations:

• 151st between Amsterdam and Broadway
• 106th/107th between Amsterdam and Broadway
• 127th/128th and Morningside

Typically, town halls/forums are held by the Councilmember’s office to address specific issues in the community when deemed necessary. This can be determined by call/email volume to the district office. However, without spatial information, it may be difficult to effecitvely determine where to hold these town hall events and where to deploy staff memembers on a flyering run.

This is where the data-driven approach shines. The darkest spots on the heatmaps represent the densest clusters of people complaining about rats. Clearly, these are the areas the Councilmember should focus on if he or she wants to maximize attendance to a town hall concerning rats.

Noise

Noise complaints were largely classified as Construction Before/After Hours. Dense clusters of complaints occurred primarily in the southern portion of the district with a smaller cluster near New York Presbyterian Hospital on the northside.

New York City is always under construction, but the fact that Noise is the largest complaint in District 7 and that it is largely focused around the southern border suggests that a very high volume of 311 calls are coming from that area. Initiating a talk with the local community board might be a good way for the Councilmember to gain favor with that region of the district.

Street Conditions

Street Conditions were largely classified as Potholes, which can be an easy fix and an easy win for the Councilmember. Hotspots for potholes include the following:

• 111th-114th between Broadway and Amsterdam
• 167th-168th on St. Nicholas
• 131st and Amsterdam

Contrary to popular belief, public agencies such as the Department of Transportation can be quite responsive once they are made aware of a particular datapoint. A quick investigation from the Councilmember’s staff to verify the location of the potholes and a firm nudge from the Councilmember through the right channels may get those nasty potholes patched up in no time.

Final Thoughts

Of course, it is important to note that this is not the complete picture since it is unlikely that everyone files a formal complaint to 311 regarding their issue. For one, 311 complaints mainly comprise of renters. Unless you’re entitled enough to think that the government is responsible for fixing the terrible paint job you did on your own home, most homeowners are not going to call the 311 hotline. Moreover, low-income and immigrant populations may be underrepresented in this data as they may have greater difficulty accessing the hotline.

That being said, this is just a brief snapshot of how using NYC Open Data can inform public policy. While this is not intended to replace methods used to assess the cost and effectiveness of policies, this approach can be used to identify the most common constituent issues in real-time, allowing the city to respond to complaints and concerns with lightning speed.

So, are you excited to run for public office yet?

Tools used: QGIS, R (ggplot2)

Tools used: QGIS, R (ggplot2)