This Web site sketches a picture of nearly five million subsidized households across the United States. It includes: (1) Totals; (2) Indian Housing; (3) Public Housing; (4) Section 8 Certificates and Vouchers; (5) Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation; (6) Section 8 New and Substantial Rehabilitation; (7) Section 236; (8) Other HUD subsidies; and (9) Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). Each line of data is identified by these key numbers, 1-9, in the second position of each data record.

Data are available for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. To view or download data for a particular State, please select from either the map (state abbreviation) or the appropriate letter below.

• The report covers nearly five million subsidized housing units, with 11 million people. Data on the occupants are missing on 16% of these units. Data on location are also missing on 16% of units, but not always the same units (pp. 6-7)

• A quarter of households are wage earners. The average income of subsidized households is $9,500 per year, and 17% have incomes below $5,000. Most projects have a moderate income mix. (pp. 8-10)

• A third of households are elderly. Over half are minorities. Two fifths include a single adult with children. (pp. 8-14)

• Subsidized households have been in their subsidy program for 6 years on average, and recent arrivals averaged 1 3/4 years (21 months) on the waiting list. (pp. 13-14)

• The average subsidized unit is in a neighborhood where one eighth of the neighborhood are subsidized, one quarter are poor, and half are minority. (pp. 13-16)

• Six sevenths of people in the United States have one or more subsidized housing units in their neighborhood. (p. 16)

• Most projects and housing agencies are small, but most subsidized units are in the large projects and agencies. (pp. 17, 40)

The information in this report is neither private nor copyrighted and may be copied. When citing it, please include the title with date: A Picture of Subsidized Households in 1998.

* Public & Indian Housing only

Added brief descriptions of programs.

Added codes & summaries for sub-programs in the Office of Housing, such as Section 202 and Loan Management Set-Asides.

Added "household income as percent of adjusted local median income" for Office of Housing programs, so it is now available for all programs.

Added data on spending for Section 236 and "Other" subsidies. Spending was not updated in Public and Indian Housing, but changes in occupied units may affect figures on spending per unit.

Slightly longer project names & addresses.

Improved weighting: when Public, Indian, Certificates+Vouchers, or Moderate Rehabilitation reported more units in the last 30 months than the total occupied units (i.e. they have not reported move-outs) we use the most recent reports, up to the number of units occupied. Previously we used all reports in the past 30 months. This change results in more recent data and a more accurate description of current occupants.

More specific geographic codes for multi-county agencies: when they are in more than one county (or place, zip code, etc.) we try to determine which county has the most units, and if it has at least a third, we use that county code, otherwise we still use 888 as a code for multiple counties.

Added standard numeric state codes and rearranged county & tract codes into standard 12-character Census tract FIPS code

Corrected calculations of income mix, resulting in 11% larger estimates of income mix in private subsidized projects, and 4% larger nationally.

Dropped data on assets, to protect disclosure of locations of elderly households with significant assets.

Combined counts of 0-1 bedrooms, and dropped 2 bedrooms, which can be obtained by subtraction.

Households which have used portability to move, are now counted under the agency that pays their subsidy, not the place they moved to. Note that if portability households are the only ones reported, their geographic codes reflect where they moved to, rather than the true location of the agency.

This report is available from HUD USER at 800-245-2691 or 202-708-3178 (TDD 800-877-8674), P O Box 6091, Washington, D.C. 20850.

The text and more complete data (including all projects, neighborhood summaries, and other years) are also on Internet at:

http://www.huduser.org/datasets/assthsg.html

People without Internet access may obtain the computer files from HUD USER for a fee.

If you browse the file on Internet, your browser probably has a "look for" button, so you can move quickly to any city name, project name, project number, etc. If you download the data to your own computer, you can use a spreadsheet, database, or other package. Such packages let you:

• Jump to any part of the file (often using the f5 key, or a command to "look for" a specific name)

• Sort the records to see the highest incomes, or most concentrated tracts, or most integrated large projects, etc. (for example sort by record type and income)

• Print selected items (highlight items you want, and/or set width of other items to zero)

• Print a referral list of subsidized housing in an area, with size, turnover, % elderly, neighborhood characteristics, etc.

• Prepare maps, using latitude & longitude from this file (44 colored maps are in the 1996 printed report, volume 11)

Records for any particular town are usually found in two places in a file: Programs run by local housing agencies are listed first, by the number of the agency. Other programs are listed later, by county and zip code. They can be re-sorted as needed.

The national data file is about 50 megabytes (240 characters per record times 192,313 records), sorted by project number. State files are smaller (same record length, but fewer records). File names include "hud4" to distinguish them from earlier files. Note that Certificates+Vouchers issued in one state and used in another ("portability") are included with the state that issued them, though they could be re-sorted to the state where they are used (see "tract" in the "Meaning of Codes" section).