Brief Overall Description of the Dataset:
The “Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy…demonstrates the extent of housing problems and housing needs, particularly for low income households. The CHAS data are used by local governments to plan how to spend HUD funds, and may also be used by HUD to distribute grant funds.” The data is collected as follows: “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) periodically receives "custom tabulations" of data from the U.S. Census Bureau that are largely not available through standard Census products.” Therefore, it is not collected every year since it is based on the ACS. The data however is very well put together; HUD has identified fixes made to the data, has a codebook on hand, has a “table generator,” and has raw data readily available. It is a perfect example of what a data set ought to be. Unfortunately, it does not have consistent, "annualized" data.
Link: http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/cp.html
Date Inventory Completed: 5/22/2015
Screening
- Is the data collected opinion-based?
- Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
- Is there data available for 2013?
- Is the data collected at the property or housing unit level?
- Can we access the data by August 15th?
Purpose
What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?
US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) seeks to “promote affordable housing” and “strong, sustainable communities.”
Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?
This is the purpose of the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Study: “The primary purpose of the CHAS data is to demonstrate the number of households in need of housing assistance. This is estimated by the number of households that have certain housing problems and have income low enough to qualify for HUD’s programs (primarily 30, 50, and 80 percent of median income). It is also important to consider the prevalence of housing problems among different types of households, such as the elderly, disabled, minorities, and different household types. The CHAS data provide counts of the numbers of households that fit these HUD-specified characteristics in HUD-specified geographic areas.
In addition to estimating low-income housing needs, the CHAS data contribute to a more comprehensive market analysis by documenting issues like lead paint risks, "affordability mismatch," and the interaction of affordability with variables like age of homes, number of bedrooms, and type of building.”
Who else uses the data?
Policy-makers, citizens, and researchers
Who do they sell the data to?
They do not sell the data.
Method
What is the data collection method?
The data comes from the US Census, so the collection method would be a survey of some kind.
What is the type of data collected?
This would be data collected under “designed collection” methods.
If designed, who created the questions?
Government
What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)?
Surveys
Description
What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?
Affordable Housing
What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?
2006-2011 (but these are in the ACS year blocks: so we are getting data from 2006-2010 and 2007-2011 time periods)
Timeliness
Is data collected and available periodically?
The data is collected according to the ACS data timeline.
How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided?
This is unclear
Selectivity
What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents?
The data represents all of the US - “renters” and “owners.”
Accessibility
How is the data accessed?
PDF or Excel
Is it open data?
Open data
Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?
I do not believe so.
Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment?
None
Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? No
Explanation: Unfortunately, this data is not consistent, "annualized" data. Since recent data and since we cannot obtain yearly data, this datasource is not of use for this project.