Data Driven Tools for Neighborhood Assessment and Housing Recovery

National Housing Conference, Oakland, CA November 18, 2014

As an increasing number of organizations are utilizing data to both evaluate the impacts and successes of programs and policies, and to target finite resources towards neighborhood revitalization, new tools are available to assist and inform.  This presentation will take examples of two on-going projects in the Twin Cities where researchers and affordable housing advocates are working together to make better decisions through data and technology.  First an indicators project involving the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Building Sustainable Communities and their attempts to monitor progress on neighborhood-level housing data tied to regional disparities in home ownership rate and housing cost burden will be presented.  A second example of this work will be the interactive web application of the Twin Cities Housing Market Index (HMI).  The HMI is a new tool based on block-level housing data that allows residents, community groups and policy-makers to generate relative market strength statistics and maps for pre-defined or custom neighborhoods.  The session will conclude with advice for those in other cities who wish to replicate this work in their local communities.Participants will learn about the ways in which commonly available administrative data can be used to evaluate housing programs and inform decision-making strategies for housing recovery in the post-foreclosure crisis period.