Archive for the 'shopping' Category

The Boston Foun­da­tion has just put out a Greater Boston Hous­ing Report Card [PDF], and drew some ridicu­lous con­clu­sions. John A Keith of the Boston Real Estate Blog explains [via]:

From the report:

Fenway/Kenmore neighborhood

2004 esti­mated renter income: $24,132
2004 esti­mated monthly rent: $1,498
% of median income needed to pay rent in 2004: 74%

No.

Why not?

1) ear­lier in their report, the authors esti­mate rents on two-​bedroom apart­ments through­out the city. They esti­mate a two-​bedroom apart­ment in the Fenway would cost $1,498 per month. A two-​bedroom apart­ment. Would one person, making $24,132, rent a two-​bedroom apart­ment? Why would they? If they did rent a two-​bedroom apart­ment, they’d have a room­mate, thereby reduc­ing their share of the monthly rate to $749. Rent would there­fore require only 37% of their gross income.

He goes on to ques­tion another aspect of their method­ol­ogy — using the adver­tised rental rates, which are often higher than what a land­lord can get. It’s an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion, because there is obvi­ously a dimin­ish­ing pool of “affordable” hous­ing in Boston. The median home price in our fair city of Cam­bridge is well over $600,000…

It always sur­prises me, the care­less­ness with which people use sta­tis­tics. No where is this more true than in the edu­ca­tion reform debate. For instance, when politi­cians say, “Half of our kids read below their grade level”. This kind of state­ment is used to pro­voke anx­i­ety, and to jus­tify rais­ing (sic) stan­dard­ized test requirements.

What they don’t choose to explain, (or under­stand for that matter), is that this is pre­cisely the def­i­n­i­tion of grade level — 50% above the line, 50% below. That’s how you set a grade level, for god’s sake.

I cringe every­time I hear sta­tis­tics being manip­u­lated like this.