Cooling Deserts for Renters: Heat Equity Inside the NYC Housing System

Author

• Tahreem Ashraf, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Master's Capstone Project

Degree Name

Master of Science

Program

Data Analysis & Visualization

Advisor

Timothy Shortell

Committee Members

Matthew Gold

Subject Categories

Community-Based Learning | Community-Based Research | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Health Economics | Inequality and Stratification | Political Economy | Public Economics | Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies | Social Influence and Political Communication

Keywords

Cooling Desert Index, Heat Vulnerability Index, energy insecurity, urban heat island, South Bronx, spatial autocorrelation

Abstract

This study introduces the Cooling Desert Index (CDI), a composite spatial measure designed to identify census tracts in New York City where extreme heat vulnerability and structural barriers to adaptive cooling converge. Drawing on five publicly available datasets and a seven phase statistical pipeline, the CDI scores all 2,231 NYC census tracts on a continuous 0 to 100 scale by integrating heat exposure, severe rent burden, household income, racial composition, language access, disability status, and housing crowding. The analysis identifies 557 cooling deserts, defined as tracts where environmental heat risk is high and financial constraints make effective cooling structurally inaccessible, home to approximately 1.47 million renters, with 54% concentrated in the Bronx. Ordinary least squares regression confirms that racial composition is the single strongest predictor of heat vulnerability rank, exceeding the predictive weight of income after controlling for borough, poverty, and all other model variables. K-means clustering reveals five distinct neighborhood typologies, each pointing to a different policy intervention. Local spatial autocorrelation yields a Global Moran I of 0.867, confirming that cooling desert concentration is highly non random and zone level in character. Policy scenario modeling demonstrates that a 10 percentage-point reduction in severe rent burden is the most powerful single lever, moving 289 tracts and reaching 842,732 renters, though no single intervention resolves the compound structural constraints facing the 257 most-affected tracts.

Comments

Online component: https://tashraf-745.github.io/Cooling-Desert-Thesis-Project/

Recommended Citation

Ashraf, Tahreem, "Cooling Deserts for Renters: Heat Equity Inside the NYC Housing System" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6764