Paul Boehnlein, GIS and conservation planning specialist for the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, heads up data management for projects like this. In short, a crew of surveyors hits the streets and catalogs every property via tablet — scraping basic geographic and political data and manually adding in subjective observations about the general condition of the property.
Properties are assigned a grade on a sliding scale (a “secure vacant structure” that earns a C or an “occupied structure” that earns a D, for instance).
“It’s a snapshot in time; it doesn’t tell us what the situation was [in the past],” Boehnlein said.
“But it’s a true snapshot. It’s a real snapshot, as opposed to the guesstimating that’s been going on for a while,” Thriving Communities Institute Director Jim Rokakis added. The “housing” conversation tends to veer into vagaries and generalities about what is a socioeconomically varied city. The upcoming survey is planned to provide a fact-based backdrop for future policy.
The end result of the job is a massive map that quantifies the number of distressed properties in an area. From 30,000-foot vantage points to granular inspections, GIS-backed data will then be used to inform the city’s housing department.
The Cleveland Foundation has committed funds for this project.
In spirit, the project will mirror a recent St. Luke’s Foundation-funded survey of Buckeye-Shaker, Buckeye-Woodhill and Mt. Pleasant, where median home sale prices plummeted from $70,000-$90,000 to $10,000-$20,000 between 2006 and 2013.
“From that project has sprung the interest in Cleveland about going out and doing the entire city,” Boehnlein said. And it ultimately falls to the city to implement policy decisions, i.e. following through on budgeted demolitions, rehabilitations, etc.
The city partners with community development corporations to do rolling code enforcement inspections on a four-year basis. The Thriving Communities Institute survey will offer a broader and deeper dataset for those inspections.
“We’re trying to supplement, as opposed to supplant. We’re not trying to take their place; we’re just trying to add to the work they already do,” Rokakis said. “We’re committed to this urban mission.”
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2015.
The American Housing Survey conducted by HUD , in conjunction with the Census Bureau since 1974 provides the information Mr. Rokakis and Mr. Bonheim claim isn’t available. Apparently they’ve never heard of it. Why is that?
Ron Dodson, you don’t know what you’re talking about. AHS does not provide the depth of information that is being discussed here. If you had ever used it, you would realize that. I think that Rokakis et al are more familiar with the housing data available than you are.
I did more than use it, JR. All I’m saying is that the data, including GIS information is already available so please enlighten me on what this survey will provide that’s not provided on the census website. I’d really like to know. I’m in favor of anything that addresses urban blight. This just seems like a duplication of effort.
AHS is based on sample data. This will produce a comprehensive data set for the city.
As stated on the census website:
“Housing units participating in the AHS have been scientifically selected to represent a cross section of all housing in the nation. The same basic sample of housing units is interviewed every two years until a new sample is selected. The U.S. Census Bureau updates the sample by adding newly constructed housing units and units discovered through coverage improvement efforts.
Each housing unit in the AHS national sample is weighted and represents about 2,000 housing units in the United States. The weighting is designed to minimize sampling error and utilize independent estimates of occupied and vacant housing units. Information regarding the sample size and response rate can be found in National Report Appendix B. For metro survey methodology, see Metropolitan Report Appendix B. See Technical Documentation for Appendices.
Due to the pooling of the national sample and 5 metropolitan samples, the 2013 sample includes approximately 84,400 housing units.”
So they extrapolate from that data. It does not give house by house, block by block detail about the actual condition of housing in each city. It provides estimates based on (sound, scientific) samples. This is of terrific use for policymakers to craft policies, but of little use for city- and neighborhood- level analysis that would provide on-the-ground solutions for a particular city.
Yes, I know the AHS is a sample and a very small sample at that. The decennial in which the first step is identifying housing units for the purpose of mailing questionnaires. If they aren’t returned, someone has to go and find out why. There’s an entire subset of questions devoted to vacant housing. All the data is crunched, mapped and made available to the public with special tools for urban planners and developers. When I moved back to this region after an absence of 25 years, I wanted to know what had happened to my old neighborhoods. I stumbled across the census.gov website. They do a lot more than just count people and houses.
The decennial census asks six questions, none of which deal with the physical nature of a particular property. The data you are referring to is gleaned from either ACS or AHS data, which is taken from a small sample (http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr414/source_14q4.pdf) .
As I said previously, this is great data to get a birds’ eye view of what’s going on nationally, and comparing broadly across cities. It is not sufficient to do any reasonable planning in the real world. I don’t know why you are so opposed to this data, but please stop spreading falsehoods about what is and is not available.
Obviously you’re not aware of the surveys done on behalf of other agencies regarding employment, commute time, crime or any of the other factors that people use in making housing choices. I’m not opposed to your survey at all. I’m just questioning the veracity of it’s raison d’etre. The only falsehood is the one claiming that there’s no historical database for any of this information because there is even if, as you say, only six questions address it. Those six questions go back for decades but any additional info this study can provide is welcome. Go for it.