Content uploaded by Stephen M. Golant
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Stephen M. Golant on Apr 28, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
HUD's Community 2020
Author(s): GRANT IAN THRALL and STEPHEN M. GOLANT
Source:
Journal of Real Estate Literature
, JULY, 1998, Vol. 6, No. 2 (JULY, 1998), pp.
147-150
Published by: {amrealestatesoc}
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44103358
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is working to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of Real Estate Literature
This content downloaded from
128.227.122.154 on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 11:12:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
il Journal of Real Estate Literature, 6: 147-150 (1998)
© 1998 American Real Estate Society
HUD's Community 2020
GRANT IAN THRALL
Department of Geography, University of Florida, Gainesville FL 3261 J, Thrall@geog.ufl.edu
STEPHEN M. GOLANT
Department of Geography, University of Florida, Gainesville FL 3261 1, Golant@geog.ufl.edu
HUD Community Planning Software (HUDCPS), also referred to as HUD 2020 (copro-
duced by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, Washington, DC)
and Caliper Corporation (Newton, MA), telephone 800-998-9999 (request product sales),
website (http://www.caliper.com/gishud.htm or http://www.hud.gov/cpd/2020soft.html) is
a full-featured desktop GIS software program based on Caliper's Maptitude version 3.0
GIS software with a customized user interface and automated thematic mapping using
data from HUD. HUDCPS runs under Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT 3.5
and 4.0. HUDCPS requires an 80486 or Pentium-based computer equipped with a mini-
mum of 12MB of RAM and a CD-ROM drive. Price is $249 with choice of HUD data
from one of four (eastern, southern, central, and western) regions of the United States or
$299 for HUD data from all four U.S. Census regions. It includes U.S. national TIGER/
Line data sets (census tracts and block groups, streets, highways, landmarks, water areas)
and attribute data (housing and population data from the 1990 U.S. Census).
Public real estate has not received the attention that it fully deserves. How does federal
funding of various kinds of housing and commercial developments affect real estate
markets? How does government direct purchase of private land affect real estate markets?
What criteria should be used by governments at the federal, state, or local level in their
decisions to fund public developments including the outright purchase land (Thrall and
McCartney, 1991)?
The largest government programs to house low-income households are administrated
by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The evaluation of the supply
of urban housing in this price category must take into consideration HUD programs.
Academic researchers and practitioner analysts who have experience with housing in the
lower price categories have experience with HUD's programs and the data on those
programs available from HUD (on specific issues that affect the housing the elderly, see
Golant, 1992). For many, acquisition of information on HUD programs and accessing
HUD housing data have been fraught with difficulty. It will come as good news for these
researchers and analysts that with these data and software product, HUD has taken a bold
step toward ameliorating this problem. This product is HUD's first step toward taking the
pain out of low-income housing data acquisition, as well as removing much of the diffi-
culty faced by new users of GIS software.
It is a common adage that geographic information systems (GIS) is a tight integration
of:
• Software,
• Data,
• Analysis,
• Hardware, and
• Personnel.
This content downloaded from
128.227.122.154 on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 11:12:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
148 GRANT IAN THRALL AND STEPHEN M. GOLANT
The Journal of Real Estate Literature has dealt with several of the above points. Several
articles have been published on how GIS technology can contribute to real estate research
and analysis (Thrall and Marks, 1993; Wofford and Thrall, 1997; see also Clapp, Rod-
riguez; and Thrall, 1997). An article has been published on the pitfalls that a real estate
analyst can succumb to when applying geographic reasoning (Thrall, 1998). In addition,
the journal has published a comparison of GIS software (Marks, Stanley, and Thrall,
1994). As the technology has developed, software designers and data providers have
expended considerable effort to make their products more widely accessible and user
friendly. Clapp, Rodriguez, and Thrall (1997) have criticized the software and data indus-
tries for not focusing their products on real estate analysis and related urban economics.
A recent collaboration by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) and a GIS software firm, Caliper Corporation, demonstrates an awareness of what
needs to be provided by the technology vendors in making the technology commonplace.
This collaboration specifically addresses the software and data components of GIS. The
HUD-Caliper collaboration combines data from HUD that should be of interest to many
real estate analysts and combines a quality GIS software product with a modified user
interface specific to the needs of the real estate analyst.
Many real estate analysts require information from HUD, but that information has been
unavailable, difficult to interpret, inaccurate, and difficult to use in a GIS framework.
HUD has adopted a policy to make its data more accessible to urban analysts. As part of
this effort, HUD has established an Internet site with information on its programs (see the
forum at http://www.hud.gov/cpd/2020soft.html). The database A Picture of Subsidized
Households offers project-level and public housing authority-level data on HUD's rent-
assisted housing programs. Caliper has its own Internet site with cross linkages to HUD's
at http://www.caliper.com/gishud.htm.
The Community 2020 combines data from HUD's A Picture of Subsidized Households
with Maptitude GIS software. The database was compiled by HUD's Office of Commu-
nity Planning and Development along with its 4,300 public housing authorities. Caliper's
Maptitude is a full featured desktop GIS software program. Current versions of Maptitude
retail for $395 and include the TIGER/Line street database. Maptitude also includes many
of the data fields from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population and US. Census of Housing
for census tract and county polygons; the appropriate polygon files are also included in the
standard issue of Maptitude. Community 2020 retails for $249. The lower price, however,
does not buy you the most current version of Maptitude. Purchasers of the Community
2020 product additionally benefit from a set of prepackaged HUD thematic maps showing
the locations of population groups, housing types and conditions, land uses economic
indicators, public housing, and community development projects. These maps are avail-
able at various geographic scales, from census block groups to census regions. The
Community 2020 product comes in two versions - a standard version with Maptitude
software bundled with a HUD database from a single U.S. Census region and a deluxe
version with data from all four U.S. Census regions (eastern, southern, central, and
western).
Maptitude version 3.0 is the software foundation for Community 2020, and there are no
plans to upgrade to the current Maptitude release version 4.0. Still, version 3.0 is a solid
desktop GIS software product. It performs standard thematic mapping, geocoding via
address matching, geographic and logical selection, and exportation to popular geographic
formats including Maplnfo. Full export capabilities in Microsoft Excel format extend to
the attributes, including the built-in census and HUD data.
Community 2020 version 1.0 provides database information on two major groups of
programs. The first group includes detailed data on existing and planned projects that are
administered by HUD's Metropolitan Community grantees and those awarded by state
This content downloaded from
128.227.122.154 on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 11:12:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HUD'S COMMUNITY 2020 149
governments to small cities and rural areas. Metropolitan Community grantees are cities
over 50,000 persons or urban counties that participate in HUD's Community Develop-
ment Block Grant Program (CDBG). Over 1,000 Metropolitan Communities receive an
annual CDBG funding allocation. Many, although not all of them, also participate in the
other programs administered by the Office of Community Planning and Development,
including the HOME Investment Partnership program (HOME), the Emergency Shelter
Grant (ESG), and the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program (HOPWA).
Projects in small cities or rural areas (nonentitlement areas) cannot be directly funded by
HUD but can be supported by their state's formula-based grant program. Together, these
programs fund a large array of local housing and community projects. To be eligible for
funding, larger municipalities must submit a Consolidated Plan that assesses their housing
and community development needs and outlines a programmatic strategy to address them.
The Consolidated Plan was so named because it merged the planning, application, and
reporting requirements for all of HUD's formula programs into one plan and planning
process. Federal funds under the formula program are distributed to localities in a lump
sum, based on a formula, and the localities in turn decide how they will allocate these
funds. This software version includes the most up-to-date information on the fiscal year
1995 consolidated plans (1996 and 1997 updates are planned).
Community 2020 version 1.0 also includes tenant and site information on rental units
(low-rent public housing projects and Section 8 certificates, vouchers, or rehabs) that are
administered by all U.S. Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) except Indian housing au-
thorities. Information on units, funding amounts, and tenant and building characteristics
are included for each PHA and their projects. Tract-level population summary information
is also available for all projects. The census data bundled with the standard Maptitude
software is supplemented with additional census and HUD indicators especially relevant
for the analysis of the locations of low-rent housing or special community projects.
While Caliper's GIS software product comes bundled with the 1990 US. Census of
Population and Housing data, using the census data in a manner specified by many of
HUD's programs has been difficult. HUD deals with this problem by modifying several of
the U.S. Census measurements to conform to HUD adjusted median family income
(HAMFI) indicators, including:
• Persons in households with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of HAMFI,
• Households with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of HAMFI,
• Persons in families with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of HAMFI,
• Families with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of HAMFI,
• Unrelated individuals not enrolled in college with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of
HAMFI, and
• Unrelated individuals with income below (30, 50, 80 percent) of HAMFI.
The HUD projects and their attributes can be displayed in a wide array of thematic
maps. The data describing these funded activities can also be viewed individually in
project information forms and collectively in a spreadsheet (dataview) format. The user
can also move relatively easily from one view to another. Thus, a project on a map can be
clicked to view its complete data profile, while data for a single project or multiple
projects can be displayed in a map format. Users can also easily examine a large array of
population, housing, and land-use characteristics of a specified neighborhood or commu-
nity in which the project is located. Therefore, for example, it is possible to identify all
projects that are located in low-income areas or all CDBG projects located within two
miles of a public housing project. Users can also easily add new project-based information
and community indicators to the database and similarly analyze them.
This content downloaded from
128.227.122.154 on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 11:12:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
150 GRANT IAN THRALL AND STEPHEN M. GOLANT
HUD and Caliper Corporation are targeting the jurisdictions that must prepare Con-
solidated Plans in order to be eligible for federal funding under HUD's formula programs
(HOME, CDBG, ESG, and HOPWA). These jurisdictions must also incorporate citizen
participation in their planning process and must hold at least two public hearings in
conjunction with their plan. This software and data combined package offers good visual
presentation of proposed projects with the ability to document possible geographic im-
pacts. The Community 2020 product will be attractive to private planners and developers,
nonprofit housing sponsors, and public agencies (including public housing authorities) -
and of course, their consultants - that have an interest in social and economic planing,
public real estate, and the impact of public real estate on local land markets. PHAs in
particular are feeling increasingly insecure given HUD's downsizing and reorganization
strategies and fear losing organizational and fiscal control to state governments. Thus, they
are increasingly concerned about building a strong empirical case for their continued
existence.
The Community 2020 product is a good example of public-private collaboration, cre-
ating a well-needed data and software package. It clearly is a useful tool for real estate
market analysts. In 1998 version 2.0 of Community 2020 is projected to include project
information on HUD's private, multifamily assisted rental housing programs and single-
family insured and manufactured housing. Maptitude version 3.0 will not be updated to
the current version 4.0 release, in future Community 2020 releases. The value over the
long term of this product depends on timely updates by HUD of its data sets. Data updates
are not presently scheduled to be available on their respective Internet sites but should be.
Missing or incomplete data about their projects obviously hamper quality analysis and
sound planning.
The manual for Community 2020 is well done. Indeed, it is an excellent source for
definitions of all HUD programs and HUD terminology. For example, within the glossary
of the manual are definitions of HUD's measures of different tenant income eligibility
thresholds.
Community 2020 increases the affordability of GIS with its below-$300 price. Com-
munity 2020 also adds value by providing the analyst access to a geographically enabled
database on public housing. HUD declares that more of its data will be released with
future versions of Community 2020, but the future releases will keep with the older
Maptitude version 3, which for many, especially new entrants to GIS, is just fine.
References
Clapp, John M., Mauricio Rodriquez, and Grant Ian Thrall. (1997). "How Can GIS Put Urban Economic
Analysis on the Map." Journal of Housing Economics 6(4), 368-386.
Golant, Stephen M. (1992). Housing America's Elderly : Many Possibilities , Few Choices. Newburry Park, CA:
Sage.
Marks, Alan, Craig Stanley, and Grant Ian Thrall. (1994) "Criteria and Definitions for the Evaluation of
Geographic Information System Software for Real Estate Analysis." Journal of Real Estate Literature 2(2),
227-241.
Thrall, Grant Ian, and Alan Marks. (1993). "Functional Requirements of a Geographic Information System for
Performing Real Estate Research and Analysis." Journal of Real Estate Literature 1(1) (January), 49-61.
Thrall, Grant Ian, and J. William McCartney. (1991). "Using the Delphi Method for GIS Criteria." Geo Info
Systems 1(1), 46-52.
Thrall, Grant Ian. (1998). "Common Geographic Errors of Real Estate Analysis." Journal of Real Estate
Literature 6(1) (January), 45-54.
Wofford, Larry, and Grant Ian Thrall. (1997). "Real Estate Problem Solving and Geographic Information
Systems: A Stage Model of Reasoning." Journal of Real Estate Literature 5(2) (July), 177-201.
This content downloaded from
128.227.122.154 on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 11:12:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
