Section 8 and GIS

[jergunderson]

I was reading an article on Albuquerque's "Affordable
Housing Portfolio" Program, which can be found at:

http://alibi.com/alibi/current/oped_section.html#ortiz

It describes how the city raises municipal bonds to buy apartments and
rents 25% of them out as "affordable" and the rest for-profit to
equalize the subsidy and to retire the bonds. Its facing problems due
to NIMBYism and slum lords that don't want to compete for low income
tenants(What's new?). What the program has being praised for is its
independency from federal subsidization and its ability to limit low
income concentration.
It got me thinking....does anybody know if anyone has ever used GIS to
geographically track Section 8(which this program is now going to have
revert to Section 8 housing), or even more boldly, to prevent Section
8 concentration?

 

[adaptor]

It seems to me HUD had the location of Section 8 units for their Community 2020 GIS. I recall mapping locations but with no policy agenda in mind.

 

[troy]

I've plotted the locations of apartment complexes that accept Section 8 vouchers in our city before. I think we might have used that map in our Consolidated Plan...

There was no "policy" reason for building the map, we were just showing that "yes, there are complexes in our city that accept section 8 vouchers, and yes, they are mostly in the southern part of our city".

If we ever develop our own housing authority, then such a map could be useful to guide in future policy making.