Data Shop: Measuring Neighborhood Opportunity With AFFH Data

Brent D. Mast
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Data Shop
Data Shop, a department of Cityscape, presents short articles or notes on the uses of data in housing and urban research. Through this department, the Office of Policy Development and Research introduces readers to new and overlooked data sources and to improved techniques in using well-known data. The emphasis is on sources and methods that analysts can use in their own work. Researchers often run into knotty data problems involving data interpretation or manipulation that must be solved before a project can proceed, but they seldom get to focus in detail on the solutions to such problems. If you have an idea for an applied, data-centric note of no more than 3,000 words, please send a one-paragraph abstract to david.a.vandenbroucke@hud.gov for consideration.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Office of Policy Development and Research, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. government.

HUD’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) database is designed to help U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program participants affirmatively further the purposes of the Fair Housing Act. Along with the AFFH database, HUD is providing a geospatial tool to generate a series of maps of tables with the AFFH data. Both the tool and database provide a new means for HUD program participants, researchers, and the public to assess neighborhood opportunity on a national basis.