"Nearly the entire staff of the Office of Economic Affairs in PD&R were handed copies of printed census tract maps, the associated EZ printout for their map, a pack of highlighters, and instructions to 'color by numbers.' The 'Crayon Brigade' produced dozens of maps depicting the proposed EZs in major cities."Įarly mapping applications: AtlasGIS and C2020 PD&R's master FORTRAN programmer, the late Ray Kahn, wrote a program that identified census tracts matching EZ criteria and produced a stack of printouts listing eligible tract IDs. At the time, PD&R could not produce maps directly with computers. Kurt Usowski, deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs at PD&R, recalls an effort spearheaded by HUD Secretary Jack Kemp to create Enterprise Zones (EZs) - areas where businesses could earn federal tax exemptions for locating in census tracts meeting specific economic criteria. Like the Housing Allowance Demand Experiment in the 1970s, HUD's mapping applications during the 1990s drew on insights into local demographic and economic trends from Census data to inform housing and community investment policies. This agency-wide user base directs large volumes of traffic to the GSC, which processes nearly 500 million addresses annually.Įarly mapping applications: The Crayon Brigade Today, the GSC is readily available to all HUD employees. The first interactive query response form on HUD's intranet was the submission form for the geocoder. HUD would mail the service bureau "a tape of addresses and 2 weeks later get it back with an address validation run." Eventually, to reduce costs and strengthen quality control, HUD relocated the GSC in house. The GSC was initially a service bureau for aggregating and processing address information. However, because computers were still expensive, HUD conducted its computing work at service bureaus - localized facilities that provided specific computing services. When the GSC began, HUD was experiencing a proliferation of computer technology and an overall increase in large-scale data collection efforts. This advancement in locational intelligence generated data that HUD offices could leverage to understand spatial patterns. The GSC allowed users to attach geographic identifiers - from standardized addresses to census tract IDs - to nearly every data element that passed through HUD. HUD began appending geographic information, or "geocodes," to HUD tenant data in the mid-1990s using its Geocode Service Center (GSC). Map of HUD Housing Allowances program participants included in a 1972 HUD Challenge article, “ Housing Allowances: A New Way to House the Poor,” by Malcolm E. The challenges of developing user-friendly databases that integrate locational data continued to define the development of GIS at HUD.įigure 1. Urning raw data into a useable analytic data base requires that data from different sources be linked together, transformed into variables, cleaned of unresolved inconsistencies and anomalies, and placed within a well-documented system that provides easy-access at reasonable cost. The Final Report on the Housing Allowance Demand Experiment in 1980 outlined some of these challenges, stating that: This map and the underlying program represent many of the historical and ongoing applications and challenges of GIS in PD&R and HUD in general. A 1972 HUD Challenge article on housing allowances highlighted these linkages in a map overlaying Housing Allowance program participants with demographic data from the Census to show key neighborhoods to receive targeted investments in Kansas City, Missouri (figure 1). PD&R has been critical in documenting the impacts of location-based programs by linking HUD's locational data with demographic and economic data from the U.S. Data: “Location is baked into the DNA of HUD”Įarly location-based programs at HUD focused on helping tenants relocate to higher-opportunity neighborhoods with low poverty rates. We supplemented these interviews with information from HUD publications dating back to 1972 as well as one written account from a longtime HUD employee summarizing their GIS experience.ġ. To explore the history of HUD's use of spatial data and tools - often called Geographic Information Systems/Sciences (GIS) - we interviewed five people who offered firsthand accounts of HUD's implementation of GIS technology. Mariya Shcheglovitova, Social Science Analyst, Program Monitoring and Research Division, PD&R (2022-present)Īlex Din, Social Science Analyst, Program Monitoring and Research Division, PD&R (2019-present)Īs analysts in HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R), we both work with spatial data and analysis tools, but our institutional knowledge is relatively recent. Location data is central to HUD's mission to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. Many aspects of HUD's work include a locational component.
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