Using Data to Assess Fair Housing and Improve Access to Opportunity: A Guidebook for Community Organizations

M E T R O P O L I T A N H O U S I N G A N D C O M M U N I TI E S G U I D E Using Data to Assess Fair Housing and Improve Access to Opportunity A Guidebook for Community Organizations Leah Hendey and Mychal Cohen August 2017 A B O U T THE U R B A N I N S T I T U T E The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the effectiveness of the public sector. Copyright © August 2017. Urban Institute. Permission is granted for reproduction of this file, with attribution to the Urban Institute. Cover image by Tim Meko. Contents Acknowledgments v Part I: Data in Action 1 Structure of the Guide 2 Using Data to Advance Opportunity 3 How Can Data Help? 3 How Can Data Inform Strategy? 6 What Types of Data Are Available? 8 What Are the Trade-Offs to Using Different Sources of Data? 9 What Resources Aid in Finding and Analyzing Data? 12 Part II: National and Local Data Sources for Fair Housing and Access to Opportunity 19 Demographics and Segregation 20 Housing 24 Property Characteristics 25 Housing Tenure 26 Lending 28 Affordability 28 Subsidized Housing 32 Blight and Abandonment 34 Land Use 36 Permits 36 Zoning 37 Disability Access 38 Disability and Services 38 Housing Accessibility 40 Access to Opportunity 42 Early Care and Education 42 Education 43 Employment 45 Poverty and Social Services 48 Infrastructure and Transportation Access 50 Environment 51 Health 53 Public Safety 55 Notes 57 References 60 About the Authors 62 Statement of Independence 63 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S V Acknowledgments This report was funded by the Ford Foundation. We are grateful to them and to all our funders, who make it possible for Urban to advance its mission. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of Urban experts. Further information on the Urban Institute’s funding principles is available at www.urban.org/support. We are grateful to Ryan Gerety of the Ford Foundation, Debby Goldberg of the National Fair Housing Alliance, and Thomas Silverstein of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law for their careful review and feedback on the guide. We thank Ned Moore from the Center on Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota, Anthony Panarese from the Oakland Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and Sarah Yeung from the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation for providing insights into their use of data. Claudia Aranda, Solomon Greene, Kathy Pettit, and Diane Levy (technical reviewer) of the Urban Institute provided expert review of drafts of this guide. Special thanks to Leiha Edmonds for writing up CURA’s story. We would also like to acknowledge Claudia Coulton’s and Kathy Pettit’s prior guidance and documentation on small-area data and the experiences of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, which informed much of this guide. We also thank Elizabeth Forney and Elaine Eldridge for editing and formatting this guide. P A R T I : D A T A I N A C T ION 1 Part I: Data in Action The places where we live shape our lives, our health, and our prospects for economic mobility. However, for many groups, including people of color, people with disabilities, and other protected classes, neighborhood and housing choices are too often constrained by private discrimination and public policies that concentrate poverty, prevent investments from flowing into distressed communities, or make housing prohibitively expensive in neighborhoods with quality schools and access to good jobs. The US Congress adopted the Fair Housing Act in 19681 not only to remedy past discrimination but also to provide tools to create more inclusive and prosperous communities and ensure that all American families have access to neighborhoods of opportunity (see box 1). Five decades after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, and even after amendments,2 however, the United States still faces significant challenges to creating inclusive communities. Researchers' use of data has been essential in telling this story. For example, researchers have used data to demonstrate the persistence of segregation and growing concentration of poverty across cities and regions (Logan and Stults 2011; Pendall et al. 2011). Mounting evidence shows that racial and economic segregation brings steep costs not only for individuals living in segregated neighborhoods but also for regions as a whole (Acs et al. 2017; Carr and Kutty 2008; Li, Campbell, and Fernandez 2013; Turner and Rawlings 2009;