In July 2015, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a final rule interpreting and implementing the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH) requirement of the Fair Housing Act (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968). In addition to releasing the final AFFH rule in 2015, HUD shared data, guidance, and resources that state and local governments could use to identify fair housing issues in their communities relating to segregation and concentrated poverty, as well as disparities in housing needs and access to opportunity for groups protected by the Fair Housing Act.
Although HUD is no longer enforcing the 2015 final rule, many communities are moving forward with robust fair housing planning, and the data HUD created are valuable for state and local policymakers, advocates, researchers, and other stakeholders to work together to identify fair housing challenges and solutions in communities across the country.
We include here the July 2020 update to the AFFH raw data that were included in the most recent version of the data and mapping tool (AFFHT0006). We also include for reference the version from February 2018 that was originally used by communities who already engaged in their AFH plan (AFFHT0004a).
Note: a version 5 (AFFHT0005) was released in June 2020, but it had fewer updated indicators than the July release. Versions 1 to 3 of the data had not yet been used by communities in their AFH plans. We do not include versions 1 to 3 or 5 here.
In addition to the raw data, we include the following HUD resources to assist users in applying the data for fair housing planning.
Datasets (AFFHT006 and AFHT004a) • Public Use Crosswalk • Public Use Data Dictionaries • Block group • Tract • Jurisdiction (“juris”) • County • Region • State • Entitlement Non-entitlement (“entl_nonentl”) • Housing LIHTC • Housing Project • Housing Tract • PHA Jurisdiction • PHA Region
Data Documentation • AFFH-T Data Documentation • AFFH Data and Mapping Tool User Guide
Other Resources • AFFH Fact Sheet – The Duty to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing • AFFH Fact Sheet – Community Participation and AFFH Guidance for Consolidated Plan Program Participants • AFFH Fact Sheet – Community Participation and AFFH Guidance for Public Housing Agencies • AFFH Fact Sheet – How Program Participants Can Collaborate on Their AFH Submissions • AFFH Fact Sheet – The Fair Housing Planning Process Under the New Rule • AFFH Final Rule Executive Summary • AFFH Rule Guidebook • AFH Tool for Local Governments • AFH Tool for Public Housing Agencies
The following Urban Institute publications provide more information on the HUD 2015 AFFH rule and additional insights on how these data and resources may be used to support community engagement and data-driven fair housing planning and policy decisions.
Gourevitch, Ruth, Solomon Greene, and Rolf Pendall. 2018. Place and Opportunity: Using Federal Fair Housing Data to Examine Opportunity Across US Regions and Populations. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/place-and-opportunity-using-federal-fair-housing-data-examine-opportunity-across-us-regions-and-populations
Hendey, Leah and Mychal Cohen. 2017. Using Data to Assess Fair Housing and Improve Access to Opportunity: A Guidebook for Community Organizations. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/using-data-assess-fair-housing-and-improve-access-opportunity
Turner, Margery, Solomon Greene, Anthony B. Iton, and Ruth Gourevitch. 2018. Opportunity Neighborhoods: Building the Foundation for Economic Mobility in America’s Metros. Washington, DC: US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty. https://www.mobilitypartnership.org/opportunity-neighborhoods.
Dataset Info
- Modified 2024-07-03
- Release Date 2020-07-31
- Temporal Coverage
- License odc-by
- Granularity Census tract, city, county, CBSA/Metro Area
- Contact Name Claudia Solari or Solomon Greene
- Contact Email [email protected]
- Public Access Level public
Urban Extended Info
- Modified 2024-07-03
- Release Date 2020-07-31
- Geographic Level
- Data Value
- Data Quality
-
Urban Publications
Place and Opportunity: Using Federal Fair Housing Data to Examine Opportunity Across US Regions and Populations
Using Data to Assess Fair Housing and Improve Access to Opportunity: A Guidebook for Community Organizations
Opportunity Neighborhoods: Building the Foundation for Economic Mobility in America’s Metros
- Citation Requirements Urban Institute. 2020. Data and Tools for Fair Housing Planning . Accessible from https://datacatalog.urban.org/dataset/data-and-tools-fair-housing-planning. Data originally sourced from HUD Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Data and Tools, developed at the Urban Institute, and made available under the ODC-BY 1.0 Attribution License.