Affordable Housing Case

Competition
Data Analytics Club Tepper School of Business
Data Analytics Club Heinz College
Students for Urban Data Systems
 Introduction to Affordable housing
In just the past five years, many Pittsburgh homeowners, renters, and prospective home buyers have experienced an
increase in housing costs.
The City of Pittsburgh desires to grow responsibly in order to build a more resilient and vibrant city for decades to come
Housing Goals
Respect and stabilize existing communities. Create quality affordable housing opportunities. Maximize the impact of
resources by ensuring lasting affordability.
Many Factors Contribute to Affordable housing
Quality of housing Service request, property assessment
Prices of houses in Allegheny county
Earnings Mortgage, cost of living (Transportation), Tax credits
Family size
Distance from prime locations
Crime rates, school districts
City problems (Flooding, snow etc.)

http://pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/ahtf/index.html
Pittsburgh Data Set

https://data.wprdc.org/dataset?groups=housing-properties
Focus of the case competition Pittsburgh/Allegheny county
 Low Income Housing Tax Credits Data
- PIT
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most important resource for creating affordable
housing in the United States today. The LIHTC database, created by HUD and available to the public
since 1997, contains information on 43,092 projects and 2.78 million housing units placed in service
between 1987 and 2014.
The database includes project address, number of units and low-income units, number of
bedrooms, year the credit was allocated, year the project was placed in service, whether the
project was new construction or rehab, type of credit provided, and other sources of project
financing. The database has been geocoded, enabling researchers to look at the geographical
distribution and neighborhood characteristics of tax credit projects. It may also help show how
incentives to locate projects in low-income areas and other underserved markets are working.
Sources
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/lihtc.html
Excel data provided
Missing data - http://lihtc.huduser.gov/missing.htm
Property Assessment

Real Property parcel characteristics for Allegheny County, PA. Includes

information pertaining to land, values, sales, abatements, and building
characteristics (if residential) by parcel. Disclaimer: Parcel information is
provided from the Office of Property Assessments in Allegheny County.
Sources
https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/property-assessments
https://data.wprdc.org/group/2789d0fe-74cc-41cb-bf5b-0962bc0b5a50?g
roups=housing-properties
Effect of Home Mortgage

http://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/hmda/
 Some questions to consider

How do you create mixed-income neighborhoods and make them last for
longer than one generation?
How do you improve neighborhoods without eliminating historic value?
Is there a social value to, or is there a business argument for, promoting
mixed-income neighborhoods?
How do you keep low-income home-owners in improving
neighborhoods?
Identify areas in and around Pittsburgh to invest in affordable housing.
Define a policy to save affordable housing in Pittsburgh.
Identify top three problems and recommend mitigation plans.
Suggested Presentation format

What is the problem you are trying to address?

What caused the problem?
What is your analysis?
What are your recommendations?
How the future looks with your recommendation?

Note: Feel free to use analysis done for other states to come up with
substantial recommendations for Pittsburgh. Provide data visualization from
other tools as required.
Sample Analysis in New York

http://envisioningdevelopmen
t.net/map/

http://datasearch.furmancente
r.org/
http://chriswhong.github.io/pl
utoplus/
http://wprdc.github.io/propert
y-information-extractor/
Other Tools

https://medium.com/plenario-dev
 Contacts

Manik Pherwani (mpherwan@tepper.cmu.edu)

Anisha Kaul (akaul1@Andrew.cmu.edu)
Ben Simmons (bsimmons@Andrew.cmu.edu)
David Dierker (ddierker@tepper.cmu.edu)
Jamie Engle (jengle@tepper.cmu.edu)