PolicyMap for BHEC Teams

The enterprise level subscription to the PolicyMap tool is available to all BHEC city teams and partners at bhecnj.policymap.com.

Please contact the site administrator, Jacob Kraybill, with login questions, including changing your password. Access to the site is limited to the staff identified through the BHEC partnerships.

PolicyMap has created a four-minute Quick Start video to learn the basics of navigating PolicyMap and finding the data you need, which is embeded below. You can learn more on PolicyMap’s comprehensive quick start guide.

In the past, PolicyMap has been used to better understand neighborhood conditions to help inform community investment strategies and track changes over time, and determine policy and advocacy priorities. For example, the tool has been used by: the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, West Virginia Statewide Afterschool Network, and Feeding America.

A few case studies:

• Maricopa County Department of Public Health
• West Virginia Statewide Afterschool Network
• Feeding America

Examples of data in PolicyMap include:

• Food access (SNAP, grocery retail, farmers markets)
• Housing Cost Burdens, Homeowner affordability, housing quality
• Transportation / Transit Access
• Demographics (By age, disabled population, family structure, language, veteran population, race / ethnicity)
• Health – Access to medical care, health facilities, Medicare population
• Quality of life: Computer and internet access, environmental hazards, cultural institutions
• Workforce- Multiple jobholders, or by income, education, industry
• Federal programs (Community Development Block Grant, Opportunity Zone, others)

The Market Value Analysis (MVA) is a data tool created by Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions. The MVA is a data-based tool to inform community revitalization and manage neighborhood change. It can help practitioners identify different types of markets, and those places where strategic intervention can stimulate private market activity or capitalize on larger trends. The MVA results are an internally referenced index of the relative strength of residential real estate markets. The tool is built using a unique combination of spatial and statistical analyses that are field validated and reviewed by local subject matter experts.

The MVA provides stakeholders with a common understanding of market types that allows public, nonprofit, and community organizations to engage in productive dialogue around the creation of coordinated investment and service-delivery strategies. The MVA results also provides a baseline against which community change over time can be measured. Each MVA is unique, and housing conditions can vary significantly between and within neighborhoods in cities across the U.S. While many studies draw comparisons between neighborhoods, the MVA results also highlight within-neighborhood market variation by using block groups as the primary geographic unit. By looking below traditional neighborhood boundaries, the MVA results can highlight market challenges and critical nodes of strength to inform investment strategies.

The Displacement Risk Ratio (DRR) is another data tool created by Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions. The DRR visualizes how the ratio of residential sales prices to median incomes changes over time.

Starting at a fixed point in time, the DRR holds median incomes constant in inflation-adjusted, ‘real dollars’, while observing actual home sales prices over time. In this way, the DRR identifies places where long-term residents may have difficulty remaining in their neighborhoods (or where households of similar economic means would be unable to move in) due to increasing home prices.

Because the DRR is based on actual sales transactions, the results can monitor change with more precision than Census tract-based indicators and point to more contemporary market changes. Gentrification is a pressing issue in many cities, and the DRR results can help ground discussions of neighborhood change within the context of prevailing housing costs. These results can help developers identify opportunities to mitigate involuntary displacement associated with rising home prices by preserving affordability in parts of a city that may still be affordable even while residents are likely experiencing pressure from rising home prices.

Combining the MVA and DRR data in PolicyMap can help practitioners tell a powerful story about the intersection of housing development and neighborhood change, overlaid with all the other powerful social and economic indicators available in PolicyMap.

The example below shows changes in Asbury Park data over time:

The data comes from many different sources. A lot of the demographic and income data comes directly from the census, either from the decennial census done every 10 years or American Community Survey data that is 5 year averages. A full accounting of data and sources is available at the Data Directory and Dictionary.

According to the Access Data page from PolicyMap, “the data comes from over 150 disparate sources, but is standardized to allow for simple analysis across indicators. We also create unique data, such as trends over time and indices that combine relevant indicators.” Data indicators include:

Demographics

• Population, race and ethnicity, age, sex, languages, foreign born, migration and immigration, households, families, homelessness, elections, religion

Incomes & Spending

• Incomes, poverty, tax returns, federal benefits, bankruptcies, housing burdens, consumer spending, medical spending

Housing

• Home sales, rents, building permits, residential & commercial vacancy, subsidized households, public housing, LIHTC

Lending

• Mortgage originations, government insured loans, refinance loans, mortgages by race, ethnicity and income, bank branches, credit unions, Historic Lending Boundaries

Quality of Life

• Crime, broadband access, time to work, heating fuel types, food access, farmers markets, environmental hazards, libraries, museums, parks, disaster risk

Economy

• Jobs, unemployment, wages, small business, employment, workforce characteristics, oil and gas production

Education

• School enrollment, educational attainment, graduation rates, school performance, cost of college, student loan debt, school locations, college locations, head start locations

Health

• Infectious diseases, opioid use, chronic conditions, access to health care, health insurance, health risk factors, federal health programs, health facility locations, food access

Federal Guidelines

• NMTC eligibility & investments, Opportunity Zones, persistent poverty, CDBG eligibility, housing opportunity index, CRA eligible areas, SBA HUB Zones, Promise Zones

Yes! The subscription level offered to BHEC cities includes support from PolicyMap that will help customize and add additional data. If you have data you’d like added, please reach out to the BHEC Program Team and we can help.

For example, you could walk around your neighborhood and collect all the addresses of food gardens. If you wanted that to be on your PolicyMap, you we can work with the data specialist to display the addresses.

If you have your own data you want to upload, you can explore the Data Loader support document. Let us know if you need help!