Inspiration
After learning about the renters' crisis at school, I researched outside of school to learn more about how it was caused. I found that the stock market can greatly influence the real estate market, and that the renter's crisis is still another effect from the 2008 recession that was disproportionately affecting low-income families and keeping them in a cycle of poverty. This would start with a family losing their home, being forced to rent, then seeing rent prices increase without any similar increase in salary to pay for it. When I began this hackathon, I saw it as an opportunity to increase awareness about this, especially since I feel that many working-class people not working in economics may not see the stock market as something that should directly concern or relate to them, or may not be aware of what they can do about it.
What It Does
It gives the user some background information about the stock market, stock indexes such as the S&P 500, economic phenomena such as the "market bubble", and other basic information regarding the economy, in a clear and simple manner. Then it leads to a screen with an interactive slider that shows how the decreases and increases in stock prices can affect several factors relating to the real estate market, done by using real data from the S&P 500 index and price data from Zillow during the 2008 recession and afterwards. This is followed by a screen with multiple options to access more information, steps to stop the renter's crisis and take action, as well as ways to share the app.
How I Built It
For the data, I reached out for and received permission to use data from Zillow. To actually code the application, I used Code.org as my platform, and used mainly C++ & Python.
Challenges I Ran Into
Planning a simple design that doesn't overload the user with information, being able to transition between pages, trying to program the sliders with the data, using two languages instead of one, and linking buttons with outside sources (such as the current S&P index, or linking with social media for users to share the app) .
What's Next For Wall Street and Your Street...
Getting it onto the Android and Apple app stores. At the moment, I am developing it into a better formatted app, providing more information to renters about what they could do as next steps, working on translating the information to Spanish and French, and hope to integrate a live component to the application by using current stock and rent price data - I believe it may be more useful, especially now with COVID-19 causing volatile influxes in the market.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.