Counting and housing the homeless: the great work of 100k homes

I recently learned that HUD requires cities to count their homeless population—once every two years in January—in order to receive federal funding. Yet as Joel John Roberts, CEO of People Assisting the Homeless, recently wrote in Huffington Post, instead of adding up the number of homeless sleeping in a given city on a given night, we should …

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Which states have the most Section 8 housing per person – Census Tuesday

I recently used open data from HUD about public-housing inventory and Census population data to examine which states had the most Section 8 housing units per person in 2010. (Section 8 is a federally subsidized program for low-income renters.) Here’s the top 6 and bottom 6: I’m not surprised that DC is number one, since it …

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Midwestern Black Population is Concentrated in Metro Areas – Census Tuesday

In honor of Martin Luther King Day (albeit belatedly), I want to highlight some Census Bureau data about the U.S. Black population. This information comes from a 2010 Census Brief, published in September 2011, entitled “The Black Population: 2010.” To me, the most noteworthy data in the report shows that Black populations in the North …

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Census Tuesdays: The Basics

The U.S. Census Bureau website is one place cities can find data about their populations. Every Tuesday, I plan to highlight some aspect of Census data that may be particularly helpful to local communities. This week, I’m going to lay out some basic information provided by the Census Bureau. There is an impressive mapping feature …

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