The Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) has released Research Maps (R-MAPS), a new line of CD-ROM products featuring spatially enabled housing and urban data sets. Volume 2: Selected Research Data Sets for 1998 provides PD&R research data in shapefile format and supersedes Volume 1. Volume 3: Selected PD&R Data Sets With LandView® provides the same housing data as in Volume 2 along with a free GIS data viewer from the U.S. Geological Survey called LandView®. Both Volume 2 and Volume 3 contain data from the following data sets: American Housing Survey, Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, Picture of Subsidized Households, and State of the Cities. The data are provided at various geographical levels. For example, State of the Cities presents data at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Central City, Suburb, Census Place, and Census Tract levels. Three of the data sets—Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, public housing program, and project-based subsidized housing program—provide data at the development level. The goal of R-MAPS is to make housing and research data more widely accessible and useful to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, there-by expanding the knowledge base and monitoring tools for improved policy and practices nationwide. The geographically coded data in these CD-ROMs enable users to apply the powerful tools of spatial analysis to a wide variety of housing and urban issues. R-MAPS is HUD's first set of spatially enabled housing research data on CD-ROM. As such, each CD-ROM includes a solicitation for feedback to help guide the development of future data products. GIS product support is available for R-MAPS from HUD USER at (800) 245-2691. R-MAPS Volume 2: Selected Research Data Sets for 1998 and Volume 3: Selected PD&R Data Sets With LandView® are available free from HUD USER. Use the order form. |
