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Mapping the Home Insurance Crisis

This collaborative project combines interactive visuals and text to explore the home insurance crisis in the United States, enabling viewers to see how rising premiums, disappearing coverage, and other negative trends are affecting communities nationwide.

The project features multiple interactive tools. Map 1, built using ZIP code-level data released by Treasury's Federal Insurance Office, reveals how the U.S. home insurance crisis has unfolded from 2018 to 2022 according to seven metrics of insurance availability and affordability (nonrenewal rates, nonpayment cancellation rates, other cancellation rates, claim frequency rates, average claim amounts, paid loss ratios, and average premiums).

Tables 1 through 7 show which ZIP codes experienced the biggest increases in each of the seven aforementioned metrics (there are also links to full databases that are sortable and searchable).

Map 2, built using county-level data obtained through a Senate Budget Committee investigation, depicts how nonrenewal rates changed from 2018 to 2023. Table 8 shows which counties experienced the largest growth in nonrenewal rates during that period, and Table 9 shows statewide average nonrenewal rates.

Both maps were made by joining Census Bureau shapefiles (ZIP code tabulation areas and counties) with geocoded ZIP code- and county-level insurance data. The resulting GeoJSON files were converted to PM tiles and displayed using MapLibre. The corresponding tables were created in Datawrapper.

Global Covid-19 Vaccine Apartheid

This storymap* depicts unequal access to Covid-19 vaccines around the world, highlights whether governments supported or opposed an initiative to temporarily suspend intellectual property restrictions to boost the supply of lifesaving doses, shows where untapped vaccine production potential exists, and explores efforts to expand generic manufacturing.

It was generated using the Mapbox Storytelling template, with GeoJSON files containing information about national vaccination rates (Our World in Data), governments' positions on the TRIPS waiver proposal at the WTO (Doctors Without Borders), the locations of idle mRNA manufacturing capacity (Doctors Without Borders and the Access IBSA project), and participants in the WHO-led mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub (Medicines Patent Pool).

*Awarded first place in the annual student dynamic map competition at the 2022 North American Cartographic Information Society meeting

Global Climate Apartheid

This storymap explores three dimensions of climate injustice: uneven responsibility for causing the crisis, worse consequences for those who are least culpable, and militaristic responses, including strengthened border enforcement aimed at barring climate migrants.

The visualization contains information about national greenhouse gas emissions (Our World in Data), per capita emissions by income (Chancel, 2022), the projected spread of inhospitable temperatures (Xu et al. 2021), global military spending (SIPRI), climate finance for developing countries (OECD), and investments in border militarization (Transnational Institute).

It was generated using the StoryMapJS template and features a combination of text, maps, charts, and graphs. I used QGIS, Mapshaper, ScapeToad, Mapbox, Datawrapper, and Flourish to produce the visuals.

Primary School Enrollment in Kenya by Gender, 2014

This interactive map depicts the number of girls and boys enrolled in grades 1 through 8 in each county in Kenya in 2014.

It was generated in Leaflet using information from the Kenya Open Data Portal.

Renewable Energy Production in the U.S., 2021

This interactive map illustrates how many megawatts of electricty were generated by solar farms, wind farms, dams, geothermal power plants, and nuclear power plants in the U.S. in 2021.

It was generated in Leaflet using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Lexington's Uneven Housing Landscape, 2015

This collaborative project provides a snapshot of housing injustice in Lexington, Kentucky, in the spring of 2015. By mapping the spatial reach of major landlords, we showed how the scourge of housing unaffordability in some of Lexington's poorest neighborhoods originates in much richer places (including some places beyond the borders of Fayette County).

Maps were produced by joining rental cost data from the U.S. Census Bureau with Lexington census tracts and ownership data from the Fayette County Property Valuation Administrator with city parcels.

We Can't Count on Trump's SEC to Tell Us If He Is Manipulating the Market

This co-authored article, published in The American Prospect on May 9, 2025, explains why the Musk-damaged SEC is unlikely to investigate whether Trump and his allies are profiting from advance knowledge about tariff changes or meme coin shenanigans.

DOGE Is Going to Kill a Lot of Americans

This article, published in The American Prospect on March 19, 2025, urges Democratic officials to attribute preventable suffering and death to Elon Musk's hostile austerity initiative.

Why Haven't House Democrats Moved to Impeach Scott Bessent?

This article, published in The American Prospect on February 25, 2025, makes the case that the Treasury Secretary is not telling the truth about DOGE's infiltration of the federal payments system.

Trump's Attack on Government Capacity Will Fan the Flames of the Home Insurance Crisis

This article, published in The American Prospect on January 9, 2025, argues that further slashing the resources of the already underfunded and understaffed Forest Service is likely to unleash more severe wildfires.

Biden Must Free the Man Who Exposed Trump's Tax Avoidance

This co-authored article, published in Rolling Stone on December 18, 2024, called on Joe Biden to commute the sentence of Charles Littlejohn, the IRS whistleblower who leaked the tax records of Donald Trump and other billionaires, before Trump could get revenge.

The Climate Crisis Is a Cost-of-Living Crisis

This article, published in The American Prospect on November 4, 2024, describes how the climate crisis is making life more expensive for working households.

What Harris Needs to Say About Hurricanes

This article, published in The New Republic on October 11, 2024, urged Kamala Harris to tell a compelling story about the escalating and deeply intertwined climate, housing, and insurance crises that might resonate with voters of all stripes.

Democrats Must Start Distinguishing Themselves on Insurance Policy

This co-authored article, published in The American Prospect on April 16, 2024, contends that one way for Democrats to pursue climate action in the face of Republican intransigence is to center the home insurance crisis, a manifestation of climate change that is already affecting millions of voters.

Jerome Powell's Fingerprints Are on the Next Banking Crisis

This article, published in Jacobin on March 27, 2024, details Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's efforts to obstruct the finalization of tougher capital requirements for big banks—one year after his deregulatory moves contributed to the spring 2023 banking crisis.

Why Biden Should Pardon the IRS Whistleblower Who Leaked Trump's Taxes

This article, published in Slate on March 25, 2024, urged Joe Biden to pardon IRS whistleblower Charles Littlejohn—as a matter of justice, given his disproportionate sentence, and because foregrounding billionaires' unchecked economic and political power in the 2024 presidential election would have been good politics.

A Return to Trump's Housing Policies Would Be a Disaster

This article, published in The New Republic on February 21, 2024, recounts the myriad injustices unleashed by Trump's HUD Secretary, Ben Carson.

Corporate Headhunters Shouldn't Control Who Can Be a Fed Reserve Bank President

This co-authored article, published in The American Prospect on December 14, 2023, explains the powerful role that executive headhunters play in determining who leads regional Fed banks and argues for a democratic appointment process instead.