Connecting the Dots

David Hoicka is HANO's Section 8 manager.

Section 8 managers are finding that mapping technology givesthem a leg up in their deconcentration efforts.

The Housing Authorityof New Orleans(HANO) was lookingfor ways to retool itsSection 8 Housing

Choice Voucher program, and showthat it provided low-income fami-lies the chance to rent in differentparts of the city, not just the poorersections. As one of the highesturban poverty areas in the nationover the past decade-with povertyrates that varied between 26.8 per-cent and 37.9 percent-this was achallenge, to say the least. And,as an agency under HUD adminis-trative receivership, the pressurewas on.

The agency dug deep, puttinginto place many initiatives, whichincluded reaching out to landlords,stepping up public and communityrelations, hiring new Section 8 man-agerial staff, and more. The agencythen made the results of theirefforts evident-visually. A map-ping program, implemented at aminimal cost, graphically showedthe agency's successful deconcen-tration of its voucher familiesacross the city.

liThe mapping showed us wewere on the right track," saidHANO Section 8 Director SelarsteanM. Mitchell.

Although mapping technology isstill fairly cutting edge for mostLHAs, many agencies like HANOare singing the praises of usingsuch technology in their deconcen-tration efforts. Maps can show thatvoucher deconcentration effortsare working, help managers targetcertain areas for landlord out-reach/participation, assist agenciesin public relations efforts, andmore. Data can be tracked accord-ing to Census tracts;' zip codes,

~-Wards,minority concentrations,and more.

liThe most important thingmapping has helped us do is plan-which includes for deconcentrationand landlord outreach," saysJennifer O'Neil, Deputy Directorof Intake & Special Programs forCHAC, Inc., a subsidiary of QuadelConsulting, Inc. that partners withChicago Housing Authority to man-age its Section 8 voucher program."In a city this large, without beingable to visualize the areas, it isdifficult to draw the line in termsof poverty rate, race, crime, schoolstats, etc. Mapping helps us dothis."

CHAC manages 32,000 Section 8vouchers and is part of CHA's pub-lic housing demolition/ redevelop-ment efforts that have resulted inthe relocation of public housingtenants around the city, usingSection 8 vouchers.

Providing housing opportunityDeconcentrating assisted house-holds has been part of the housingprovider's mission right from thestart with "the Housing andCommunity Development Actof 1974. There has, however,been debate over the best use ofextremely limited housing programresources, particularly whetherfunneling significant moniestoward deconcentration efforts isan efficient use of these limitedresources.

Still, deconcentration remains aHUD and LHA priority. Housingagencies have worked not only toensure vouchers are being used, butthat families are being given theopportunity to really choose wherethey want to live. Two Section EightManagement Assessment Program(SEMAP) indicators look at theextent of deconcentration andefforts made to expand housingopportunity.

Deconcentration also has been a. hot-button topic during congression-al appropriations. Congress has crit-icized the Section 8 Housing ChoiceVoucher program for not providingreal choice to voucher holders, butinstead concentrating them in high-er-poverty areas. Appropriatorshave used this argument to makecuts to the program; two years agoCongress appropriated 79,000vouchers, which then was whittled

November/December 2002 35

down to 26,000 the following year,and was further cut this year with15,000 proposed for fiscal year2003.

At the same time, though, decon-centration has proven a complexand precarious goal for housingagencies. Market conditions affectvoucher success rates, which arepart and parcel of successful decon-centration efforts. HUD's recentreport entitled, "Study on Section8 Voucher Success Rates inMetropolitan Areas-Vol. I," foundthat success rates were lower intight housing markets than in loos-er markets. Previous studies havealso suggested that the existence ofSection 8 submarkets-made up oflandlords who are familiar with theprogram and willing to lease toSection 8 holders-are largely inpoverty-concentrated neighbor-hoods.

Other obstacles to successfuldeconcentration include financialbarriers such as credit checks,transportation costs, securitydeposits, the amount of searchtime provided, familiarity withneighborhoods, special needs ordisabilities, participants' personal

AT-A-GLANCE* Although still cutting edge, map-ping technology helps LHAs visuallytrack the success of its deconcentra-tion efforts.* The key to mapping: Understandyour own data. Where are yourcontracts? What is the rental marketsituation?* Many LHAs code by zip code orcensus tract, noting that census datais downloadable for free off the U.S.Bureau Web site. Others drill downto the street level.* In the future, mapping will beused in Web-based applications andshared with planning departments orcommunity development agencies.

problems, large-size families,employment, and discrimination.

Despite these obstacles and thecomplexity of deconcentration,LHAs and Section 8 managers arefinding innovative ways to moreefficiently run their programs, withdeconcentration as a major objec-tive. Mapping is one such tool.

Cleaning up dataThe key to mapping is first, under-standing your own data, say agen-cies that are implementing suchtechnology. Where are your con-tracts? What is the rental market sit-uation in your jurisdiction?

"Digesting your own contractdata and being able to look at it inthe context of community demo-graphics ...Do those two things andyou've come a long way," saysBruce Melville, supervisor of-Standards and Performance for the ~Cuyahoga Metropolitan HousingAuthority in Cleveland. ,

Cuyahoga, since 1995, has been"seriously specifying" census tractsfor each of its contracts. Theagency does periodic downloads ofvoucher unit addresses and censustracts, correlating that with thepoverty rate of each census tract.The agency is now partnering witha local university, Cleveland State,to generate maps based on itsaddress file.

The agency has a letter thatspecifies the terms of the data shar-ing with the university. This letterensures the anonymity of theagency's tenants.

"Wemake sure that the files theuniversity is geocoding don't haveclient names-just addresses andsuch. We assure that level of confi-dentiality."

In Chicago, CHAC, Inc. has hadin-house mapping capabilities forthe past year. But, like Cuyahoga,the group's management points todata concerns as the first step inthe mapping process.

"The most difficult thing is clean-

36 Journal of Housing & Community Development

ing up your data, not the mapping,"says Bina Panchal, CHAC's seniormanagement analyst who putstogether maps quarterly for theSection 8 program. "One thing wehad to do is put into place a qualitycontrol process that continuouslycleaned up our data."

CHAC has such a person who,every two weeks to every month,goes through the list of contracts.

Once the data is "clean," current,and in place, agencies can conductanalysis. Cuyahoga, although it ispartnering with Cleveland State toproduce the maps, still conductsstatistical analysis in-house. One ofthe necessary "links" that spurredsuch data tracking and analysis isthe need for a rent determinationprocess that reflected all the varioussubmarkets in an agency's jurisdic-tion as well as at the census tractlevel, Melville says.

~"It is important that we know themarket well enough to be able to

. match, whenever possible, unassist-ed rentals so that we can approvecontracts and stay within the rentburden limits in deconcentratedareas."

Although they are taking theirdata to the next level by visuallyinterpreting it, the data and analysisthe agency has already undertakenover the past seven years hashelped them see the big picture.

"Our partners are the familieswe assist, the landlords that wehave contracts with and, ofcourse, HUD," says Melville. "In alarger sense, though, our commu-nity is our partner too. To be goodpartners with other public officialsin our community, we need tofirst, have a handle on our owndata. We need to be able to talkabout it in the context of the larg-er market and community demo-graphics."

Cleveland State has one mapalready completed for the LHA,which the agency used in a recentlandlord workshop to visualize where

the agency's contracts were. Theagency plans to make further use oftheir data and accompanying maps.

"We expect to use [the maps] tohelp train ourselves and expand ourcapacity to do our own analysis,"Melville says.

Putting maps to 'workThere are seemingly endless waysfor LHAs to use maps. They can beused to monitor the percentage ofSection 8 voucher holders' rent bur-den; show the proportion of ownersto renters in the region and the dis-tribution of affordable rental hous-ing; illustrate the relationshipbetween fair market rents and LHApayment standards to housing costsin the unsubsidized market; aids inlandlord outreach efforts and mobil-ity initiatives to encourage programparticipation in areas of less con-centrations; demonstrate howincome, racial, and ethnic distribu-tions of the population are relatedto the distribution of subsidizedhousing; point out employment ~opportunities and public transporta-tion available to lower-incomehouseholds in the region; and assistin public relations efforts for theprogram.

Questions to consider are demo-graphic trends in a locality, differ-ences in trends according tosub-area, how vouchers utilizationhas been affected by these trends,and if community residents thinkthat voucher participation is affect-ing these trends. Agencies need tofigure out what they want thesemaps to do for them, says Panchalof CHAC. Although CHAC has hadin-house mapping capabilities foronly the past year-and-a-half, it hasbeen outsourcing them since itstarted managing CHA's Section 8program in 1995.

When it first decided to bringmapping capabilities in-house, theSection 8 management companyhad to figure out what mappingprogram to use. Then it had to

Deconcentration also hasbeen a hot-button topic

during congressionalappropriations. Congress has

criticized the Section 8 HousingChoice Voucher program for

not providing real choiceto voucher holders, but instead

concentrating them inhigher-poverty areas.

decide which way to most feasiblygeocode [program] data-by zipcode, census tract, or communityarea.

"If a housing authority isn't con-cerned about details, the cheaperoption is to go with the zip code orcensus tract [level],"Panchal says."For us, that has been quite suffi-cient. We haven't had to go down to~theaddress level." Census data isdownloadable for free off the U.S.Census Bureau Web site.

Going by zip codes to show whatsuburban neighborhoods Section 8clients are residing in would probablysuffice for small agencies, she adds.

For the Housing Authority ofAlameda County, though, moredetail was necessary.

"We are mapping down to thestreet level," says Ophelia Basgal,the housing agency's executivedirector. "The more units you have,the more likely that the censuslevel becomes an undifferentiatedblob of dots unless you print it on ahuge scale."

The agency has partnered withthe Alameda County PlanningDepartment to produce the maps.The department has the censusdata, streets, and equipment neces-sary to produce large-scale maps,which will include area schools,

transportation centers, and more.After making these key deci-

sions, housing agencies can thentake the data they've been storingand use it in a variety of ways.For HANO, one use was to showthe relationship of poverty rateto Section 8 units by plotting thenumber of Section 8 units 'percensus tract.

"The result demonstrated thatour deconcentration program wassucceeding," says Mitchell. "Therewas no high concentration ofSection 8 units in high-povertyareas. In fact, the map visuallyshowed that the number of Section8 units in high-poverty areas paral-lels the number of Section 8 unitsin lower-poverty areas."

Cuyahoga plans to use maps tomaintain that delicate concentra-tion/ deconcentration balance.

"lt is important to analyze themarket to know what share of thetotal rental market, at the tract level,is under Section 8 contract," Melvillesays. "Weneed to know if we arecreating new, unintended concentra-tions of assisted households."

Reaching outOne way agencies are using mapsis as a management tool to targetcertain areas for landlord outreach.

The Chicago Housing Authorityand CHAC have a mobility / decon-centration goal that focuses on notonly economic desegregation, butracial desegregation as well. Onemap has been useful to its mobilitycounselors by showing areas wherepeople can move that are below 24

~percent poverty as well as below 30percent African American (CHACand CHA criteria).

"We look at both factors so whencounselors look at this map, theywill be able to say, 'These areas arewhere I want to recruit units andtarget landlord outreach efforts,"Panchal says.

On the other end, maps canalso be used to educate families

November/December 2002 37

that LHAs are serving. TheHousing Authority of AlamedaCounty currently conductsbriefings for its Section 8 familiesthat are "like a chamber of com-merce thing." The agency plansto take this one step further withmaps.

"Youcan put maps up at thebriefing so everyone can see whereschools are, where the employmentis," Basgal says. "This will be helpfulin educating families as they arechoosing where to live."

Maps also have had a hand inhelping LHAs reach out to theircommunities, as a whole. LHAshave used maps in public relationsefforts to show the actual vouchernumbers in different neighborhoods.

"The flipside to deconcentrationefforts is that success can meanreaction or criticism from commu-nities that feel. they are getting ~ ~overwhelmed with Section 8,"Melville says. "Now, when an offi-cial of some suburban area, maybea councilman, complains thatsome particular neighborhood isall Section 8, we can go to our dataand say, 'That simply isn't so.'"~

On the flipside, the data can beused to show the benefits of theHousing Choice Voucher programand the resources it brings to com-munities. Section 8 vouchers canbe a form of stabilizing rent rev-enues and tax receipts for that.community.

"Youcan show where your fundsare going," Panchal says. "Youcanshow where people are moving andwhat communities are getting aninflux of money. Basically, you cansay, 'We are giving so-and-soamount to your community: whichis a good way to put a different lighton the information."

Not a reAlthough mapping Section 8 con-tracts is a useful tool to show thatan agency has deconcentrated itsSection 8 program units, LHAs are

38 Journal of Housing & Community Development

really looking for more ways to usethe technology as a managementtool to better serve low-incomefamilies. As noted, agencies arealready using maps to show wherethey should target deconcentrationefforts, make their staff moreknowledgeable about local trendsand demographics, and more. Theuses for maps go beyond theseefforts, though.

CHAC now produces maps quar-terly, providing them to CHA aswell. The housing agency is think-ing of using maps as a way to man-age how counseling agencies assistpublic housing families relocatingwith Section 8 vouchers.

The agency also plans to usemaps in the future to link Section8 families to employers, transporta-tion and schools; show areas wherethere have been lead-based paintissues; and as part of a possiblenew initiative to set up satelliteoffices to better serve its clients .

. The maps would show where theLHA's clients are and what thebest places would be to set upthese offices.

Other LHAs, like Alameda, arepartnering with planning depart-ments or community developmentagencies. And, the next step couldbe Web-based applications.

"I heard a community was usingWeb-based mapping that measuredSection 8 units against health data.They were looking for community-based initiatives," Basgal says.

Although there are endlessopportunities for the future, there isno doubt that LHAs are already see-ing the benefits of current mappingtechnology in their Section 8 vouch-er programs.

"Instead of being just a percent-age or a number on a piece ofpaper, mapping adds a geographicdimension that makes our databasemore useful," Panchal says."Housing authorities are realizingthat you can do so much more withyour data." ~