code4sac/housing-data-hub

A website to put data in the context of housing policies and programs.

Housing Data Hub

The Sacramento Housing Data Hub was inspired by a desire to provide community members with a common set of facts and data surrounding the complex issue of housing affordability in the Sacramento area. The site, a work in progress, is a comprehensive website to help Sacramento area residents understand the housing market, including for-sale inventory, single-family detached and multi-family rentals, subsidized affordable units, and more. The site will feature housing data visualizations, the relationship between housing costs, vacancy rates, income, and the local economy, explore existing and potential policy solutions, and catalogue the ongoing discussion at the federal, state, and local level.

At its core, this is just a [Jekyll site that leverages open data APIs, CSV files and some great open source javascript libraries] to handle charting and visualization.

###Getting started If you want to take a look on your own machine, here's how you can get up and running:

Do this the first time:

1. Fork and clone the repo to a directory on your machine
2. Make sure you have Ruby installed by running ruby --version You should have either 1.9.3 or 2.0.0 If you don't, follow these installation instructions.
3. Get Bundler by running gem install bundler. Bundler is a package mangager that makes versioning Ruby software a lot easier.
4. Now issue the command bundle install in the cloned repo root directory, this will set you up with Jekyll and the key dependencies

To run the site on your machine:

Issue the command bundle exec jekyll serve and the site should be available at http://localhost:4000

Check out the Jekyll documentation here and the Github Pages documentation here for more.

housing-data-hub's Issues

Create progress tracker for affordable housing development

If data exist with respect to building units at different levels of affordability, create a progress tracker that shows the increase in units over time. Perhaps aligned with the Downtown Housing Initiative.

Track Statewide Implementation of 2017 Housing Package

The CAlifornia LEgislature passed a series of bills intended to ease the housing crisis across the state. These will impact Sacramento - understanding the opportunities and challenges these bills present will be critical to making sure we capitalize on them. A status and implementation tracker can help us understand this process.

http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/09/15/the-basics-on-california-lawmakers-housing-proposals/

Tools for scraping/listening to common sites such as Craigslist / NextDoor for issues

Poll and aggregate issues about housing into a data repository

Have a calendar on the system announcing meetings and events for subscription

As events come up, the site should be able to publish those for people to add to their own personal calendars.

Create other housing data resources section

Sites could include census.gov (as well as some key pages within that site, such as construction permits), as well as some of the organizations above.

Polling via tools like SurveyMonkey to distill input form the community

Poll and aggregate issues about housing into a data repository

Create a one stop shop for available housing programs and application processes

A 'Kayak' for affordable units/subsidies if you will.

Should include a complete listing of landlords that accept Housing Choice Vouchers.

Create housing policies section

Create a section that explains different types of policies or tools to promote affordable housing: land trust, inclusionary housing ordinance, housing trust fund, etc.

Redesign Front Page

Front Page should include

1. Overview heading + text describing housing data hub
2. Link to Survey for renters
3. Tiles for Content Sections:

• Housing Policy in Sacramento
• Sacramento Housing Data By the Numbers
• Housing Organizations & Roles
• Housing Resources
• Housing in the News

City of Sacramento Housing Trust Fund Visualization

We have two fees associated with funding affordable housing in Sacramento:

1. Housing Impact Fee - assessed on market rate housing based on dwelling size and total square footage. https://www.cityofsacramento.org/…/Resou…/Housing-Impact-Fee
2. Linkage Fee - assessed on commercial property construction to fund workforce housing (aka affordable). https://www.cityofsacramento.org/…/Housi…/Housing-Trust-Fund
   Both funds flow into the city's Housing Trust Fund.

Questions:
What happens once the money is in there? I want numbers on the condition of the fund and how much gets collected for the fund.
How does this compare to other communities?
Does the County of Sacramento have similar sources?

To Do:

1. Pull data for housing trust fund (HTF) sources
2. Build visualization of past, current, and projected state of HTF
3. Research housing trust fund sources in other communities

Eviction data

San Francisco has a data hub in order to access evictions, however we don't have the same data set for Sacramento.

It seems like there's some resources that are similar https://www.saccourt.ca.gov/ud/ud.aspx and https://services.saccourt.ca.gov/PublicCaseAccess/ but it is not easy to access eviction datasets from here.

Create housing programs section

Housing Programs, subdivided by the beneficiaries for the program (renter, homeowner, developer, etc.)

Survey questions

Services / GetHelp

Something of a FAQ should be available for those who land here and want to know how, for instance, to report rental issues, real estate issues, questions about developments... high-level referrals to the relevant agencies in the Sacramento area.

from Brainstorming session Mar 7.

Be able to easily publish articles from the site out to Facebook, twitter, etc...

Site should act as a Content Management System, publishing articles to common social media

Create housing in the news section

A Housing in the News section would link to recent articles on housing.

Create housing organizations and roles section

Name key organizations and agencies in the Sacramento region and describe what their roles in affordable housing are. For example, SHRA, SACOG, HCD, HUD, SHA, Mercy Housing, etc.

Housing Market Data and Demographics

High level explanation of housing market, definition of affordability, and details about sacramento market

https://docs.google.com/a/codeforsacramento.org/document/d/1jAIxKC50NUwI7gZlRKns4qdq3NfhgxB5sHR_0UMyvT4/edit?usp=sharing

Housing Development Tracker

Create a tracker to monitor planning dept, commission, and city council approvals of major projects in Sacramento.

https://www.cityofsacramento.org/Clerk/Legislative-Bodies/Boards-and-Commissions/Planning-and-Design-Commission

Questions from the Community

Allow community members to ask questions and provide answers ongoing.