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Housing Data Resources

The following are useful resources for finding housing data on the Internet:

American Factfinder
American Factfinder is a tool of the U.S. Census Bureau that allows the user to customize datasets on population, housing, economic, and geographic data.

Dataplace
DataPlace is a KnowledgePlex® initiative sponsored by the Fannie Mae Foundation that is a source for housing and demographic data about your community, your region, and the nation by assembling a variety of data sets, maps, profiles, charts and tables from multiple sources.

HUD's Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) database
The Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) data lists housing problems and the affordability mismatch based on census data for individual geographic areas, including information for HOME and CDBG jurisdictions to prepare their consolidated plans.

HUD User
The HUD-User Website provides current information on housing needs, market conditions, and HUD programs, as well as research on important housing and community development issues. The HUD-User datasets allow the user to customize information on housing programs, the American Housing Survey and more.

Out of Reach
Out of Reach is an annual report issued by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that calculates the amount of money a household must earn in order to afford a rental unit at a range of sizes at the area's Fair Market Rent (FMR), based on the generally accepted affordability standard of paying no more than 30 percent of income for housing costs. The report includes an interactive database to search for statistics based on income levels for every county, metropolitan area and state.

Paycheck to Paycheck
The Center for Housing Policy's online, interactive database Paycheck to Paycheck, presents wage information for more than 60 occupations and home prices and rents for nearly 200 metropolitan areas. Paycheck to Paycheck utilizes consistent measures of wages and housing costs so you can: see how workers in your metropolitan area are faring in the housing market; view the big picture for housing affordability for working families in various occupations across the country; and use these analyses as a template to examine wages and housing costs in neighborhoods in your community.

State of the Cities database
The SOCDS provides census data for individual Metropolitan Areas, Central Cities, and Suburbs on demographic and economic characteristics of the population; employment; and categories related to development and affordable housing.