Preservation Catalog

Overview

A Preservation Catalog is NLIHC’s term for a database of all rental projects with units affordable to low-income households (<=80% AMI) as a result of one or more federal, state, or local subsidies. Some of the property-level information captured in this database would include name, locational characteristics (e.g., address, city, latitude and longitude, etc.), owner, manager, and a project’s physical condition. The Catalog would also capture any information pertinent to each and every subsidy that contributes to a property’s affordability, including each subsidy’s effective and expiration dates, the number of income-restricted units, the income level at which the property is affordable, and an owner’s intention to either continue or discontinue participation in the affordable housing program.

By itself, this Preservation Catalog would be the first of its kind to integrate information on all housing subsidies for each affordable project. As such, it would enable advocates and researchers to easily quantify the availability of affordable housing in any geography while at the same time establishing a baseline of affordable units against which future levels could be measured.

With the generous support of Fannie Mae, the National Low Income Housing Coalition is in the process of developing a national inventory of assisted housing across federal subsidy programs integrated at the property address level as the foundation for a national Preservation Catalog, it is currently very difficult for anyone interested in the state of subsidized housing in the United States, whether nationwide or in a specific locality, to build a project-level picture of the sector, which leads to a great deal of uncertainty around how many unique properties are subsidized in the country and by which subsidies. It also means that those interested in preserving the current stock of affordable housing have a tough time figuring out how many subsidized properties are at risk of losing their affordability.

To address this lack of comprehensive project-level data, a Preservation Catalog uses data from government, financial, and grassroots sources to create a data system that is:

Comprehensive: The catalog must include all federally subsidized housing units and local information as it is available, nationwide.
Integrated: The catalog must contain only one record for each assisted property that includes information on all subsidies that make it affordable. This criterion necessitates a unified database rather than one for each program.
Preservation-oriented: The catalog must provide clear information on affordability periods, such as Section 8 contract expiration dates and mortgage maturity dates, as well as indicators of increasing risk of loss.
Locally monitored: Inherent in the vision of a preservation catalog is the creation of linkages between the assisted properties and local organizations to ensure the accuracy of the data and facilitate the identification – and ultimately the preservation – of at-risk projects.

Since 2006, NLIHC has been researching the feasibility of a national Preservation Catalog with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In this process, NLIHC has built housing preservation catalogs for Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia and created initial inventories of projects in North Carolina and Washington State. The NLIHC research team has also consulted on projects across the country including Florida, New York City, and Utah and recently published a detailed Preservation Guide on how to create a local inventory and establish a preservation catalog.

Background: The National Preservation Data Landscape

NLIHC began its work on this issue by investigating other efforts to collect information on the universe of subsidized rental housing. These documents summarize our early findings.

This Research Note (January 2008) describes the efforts of several government agencies and nonprofits to collect and disseminate data on the country's subsidized rental stock. Although we find no evidence that a national Preservation Catalog exists or is in the works, we identify many important data sources and partners that could contribute to such a project in the future.
This Research Note summarizes 15 interviews with organizations that actively maintain subsidized housing databases. The depth of information, breadth of programs, and geographic scope of each effort vary considerably (June 2006).
Preserving Assisted Rental Housing: The National Data Infrastructure has a wealth of information on assisted housing preservation, including an inventory of data collected by national and state organizations and a long list of research reports dealing with affordable housing preservation and associated data.
In the third response in this article, NLIHC Research Director Danilo Pelletiere argues that a preservation catalog forms the foundation of a “preservation-first” approach to local economic development.

Building the Foundation for a Preservation Catalog

Having done its due diligence, NLIHC built two state-level Preservation Catalogs from the ground up: one for Florida and one for the District of Columbia. The following three documents recount NLIHC’s experiences and early conclusions that were drawn from the work.

These 10 slides summarize NLIHC’s findings from assembling two state-level Preservation Catalogs in 2006. Findings focus on the obstacles encountered integrating publicly available datasets.
This report recounts the obstacles to – and suggested workarounds for – combining existing federal datasets into an integrated, property-level Preservation Catalog

Developing a National Preservation Catalog

Building on case studies and related research, NLIHC is dedicated to developing a realistic, achievable proposal for the construction of a national Preservation Catalog.

These 17 slides summarize some of NLIHC’s activities and describe our plans to promote legislation calling on the federal government to provide more and better data. With these additional data and with grants to support data collection at the state and local levels, a national Preservation Catalog can become a reality.
In a “how-to” Preservation Catalog workshop, presenters at NLIHC’s 2008 Housing Policy Conference demonstrated what federal data are currently available, how to build a Preservation Catalog, and what can be accomplished by combining state and local data with a network of Project Monitors. This sheet is particularly helpful for those wishing to integrate the available federal datasets into a comprehensive relational database.
This spreadsheet lists the variables that an eventual Preservation Catalog should contain, as well as the availability of this information for the 12 federal subsidy programs that fund affordable project-based rental housing. Although not all of the data are currently available to the public, a comprehensive Preservation Catalog would include each piece of information for all 12 programs, and NLIHC is pursuing legislation that would compel the federal government to provide additional data.

State and Local Preservation Data Case Studies

NLIHC believes that a Preservation Catalog will be an effective tool for preserving affordable rental housing only if advocates in the community are engaged with the data, both as end-users and as contributors. NLIHC describes what it calls a system of Project Monitors in these slides, which demonstrate why the Project Monitor concept is so important and how it could significantly contribute to the accuracy and comprehensiveness of a Preservation Catalog. The slides were part of a session at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in February 2008; presentations made by the Urban Institute, National Housing Trust, and AARP are available at the New Partners website.

In order to better inform a proposal for a national Preservation Catalog with associated Project Monitors, NLIHC embarked on five very different state-level case studies. In each case, NLIHC, with the help of its partners, is investigating the processes for establishing an active network of Project Monitors. It is hoped that the “best practices” that emerge from these case studies will provide some guidance for establishing a system aimed at preserving the subsidized rental stock on a national scale.

Northern Virginia:

The Northern Virginia (November 2009) preservation catalog provides information from available public data sources on all 231 known rental properties and limited equity cooperatives made affordable through federal and/or local subsidies in the Northern Virginia jurisdictions of Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax county, Falls Church and Fairfax City. NLIHC is dedicated to correcting and improving these data through local stakeholder input. The current catalog is a DRAFT for discussion only. We encourage you to submit updates, corrections, and improvements.
These maps show the location of the subsidized properties in Northern Virginia for both the Alexandria and Arlington areas (May 2009).

For previous versions of the NOVA Preservation Catalog, click here

District of Columbia

The D.C. Preservation Catalog (July 2010) provides information on all 337 known rental properties and limited equity cooperatives made affordable through federal and/or local subsidies in the District of Columbia. For previous versions of the DC Preservation Catalog, click here
The ‘Affordable Housing Clearinghouse Act of 2008,’a first-of-its-kind law requiring the D.C. mayor to create and update a preservation catalog.
These maps show the location of the subsidized properties in D.C. for each of the city’s eight wards (July 2007).
These six slides were used to briefly summarize D.C.’s subsidized housing stock at the initial Project Monitor meeting (7/25/07) and are accompanied by an introduction and sample page from the full Preservation Catalog

Florida

At the initial Project Monitor meeting (5/16/07), these slides were used to succinctly lay out the role NLIHC initially envisioned for Project Monitors in Florida. They also include additional topics for discussion that need to be explored as this project progresses.
Our partner in this case study – the Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing at the University of Florida – maintains one of the most comprehensive state-level databases of subsidized housing available today.
Also provided at the initial meeting (5/16/07) by the ShimbergCenter for Affordable Housing was this overview of the subsidized rental stock in Florida.
At the meeting in May, the Shimberg Center distributed this list of projects in South Florida with at least one subsidy expiring by 2010.
This document illustrates the Shimberg Center's proposed online system for communication between Project Monitors and Shimberg staff (8/20/07 conference call). As currently envisioned, this system will allow Project Monitors to submit and view comments on subsidized rental properties, with the goal of both identifying and preserving at-risk projects while also improving Shimberg's Assisted Housing Inventory database.
This slideshow outlines the proposal for a Network of Project Monitors and was presented at the fall meeting of the Florida Alliance of CDCs (9/7/07).
These slides provide a detailed description of the Shimberg Center's Assisted Housing Inventory, the proposed system for monitoring Florida's subsidized stock, and the online comment form that Project Monitors can use to correct data and identify at-risk projects in the state.

North Carolina

These nine slides were used to discuss the subsidized rental stock in North Carolina and to introduce the idea of a system of Project Monitors to help preserve the state’s stock (initial meeting, 7/27/07).

Washington

The 1,747 subsidized rental developments of which NLIHC has knowledge are described in this Washington State Preservation Catalog (May 2007). Projects are listed alphabetically by city and project name.
These slides, which lay the groundwork for a system of Project Monitors and describe the affordable stock by subsidy program and expected expiration date, were presented at the initial Project Monitor meeting (5/25/07)

Contact NLIHC about this Project

Please contact Megan DeCrappeo, research analyst (megan@nlihc.org ; 202-662-1530 ext. 245) with any questions or concerns regarding the particulars of the documents posted here or about the larger effort as a whole.

If you or your organization is interested in learning more about being a Project Monitor in your community, please contact Ed Gramlich, regulatory director/ state partner liaison (ed@nlihc.org ; 202-662-1530 ext. 314).

Far from a static housing database, however, NLIHC envisions establishing a nationwide network of Project Monitors that would essentially function as the “eyes and ears” of affordable housing in their community. Monitors would actively engage with the data by providing updates and clarifications for projects with which they are familiar. A Project Monitor’s most important role, however, would be alerting the database administrator of any threat to a project’s affordability status. Following such a notification, groups involved with affordable housing preservation in the area (e.g., legal services, tenant organizers, CDCs, nonprofit housing developers, etc.) would be apprised of the situation and, where resources permit, steps would be initiated to keep the project affordable to low-income households. (Refer to this document for a more detailed discussion of possible activities that Project Monitors might engage in and a clearer understanding of the data they might collect.)

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