Category: Open Data

Commentary on major government transparency issues and unique data-based projects using RentConfident’s own research.

[QUIZ] The Importance of the Decennial Census

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It's time once again for U.S. residents to complete the decennial Census. "Decennial" means once every ten years. "Census" means a head count of every person living in the country. It's an incredibly important process that will affect all of our lives for the next ten years. As of the time of publication, only 42.9% of Chicago residents have completed their census forms, so today I wanted to provide a quiz to help you to understand the impact of this survey. Continue reading [QUIZ] The Importance of the Decennial Census

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Complaints, Campaigns and Conspicuous Flaws: Chicago’s 311 Calls by Category

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For the past two articles I've been looking at Chicago's 311 non-emergency service hotline data from the past year with a focus on snow removal complaints. But that is only one of 96 separate categories used by 311 to sort the many calls they receive in a year. Today I pulled a list of all of the complaints from December 6, 2018 through December 6, 2019. I then grouped them by rough umbrella categories and added up the calls within each category to see the types of things that will spur Chicago residents to pick up the phone (or open an app) and file a complaint with the city. Continue reading Complaints, Campaigns and Conspicuous Flaws: Chicago’s 311 Calls by Category

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Kay Cleaves

Mapping Chicago’s Snow Removal Complaints

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I have for many years been waiting for Chicago to make public their data on the complaints received by the 311 department about unshoveled sidewalks. They have finally granted my wish. Unfortunately the data has become available at a time when Google is shutting down their Fusion Tables service, so I had to learn how to use a new service to create the necessary map. Because of course there was going to be a map.

In this article I take a look at the data that has accrued since the start of this past October, meaning we have only two really big snowstorms worth of data to consider. Those two snowstorms yielded about 1200 complaints to 311. I think that is more than enough for now. Continue reading Mapping Chicago’s Snow Removal Complaints

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Off-Campus Housing Studies: Think Tanks and Apartment Scholarship

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Over the past few weeks I've been looking at the groups across the US that focus on research into apartments, multifamily housing, and related landlord-tenant matters. I started with a comparison of the abundant research into tenant matters and low income housing against the scarce research into landlord matters. I then moved on to a roundup of the recent research papers released by graduate and doctoral students across the US. Last week I provided a list of the universities and colleges across the country with centers or departments dedicated to housing studies.

But not all housing-related scholarship occurs on college campuses. The US also has a large number of think tanks, corporate groups which focus on research and advocacy. Some are for-profit, most are non-profit. Most are based in Washington, DC. Continue reading Off-Campus Housing Studies: Think Tanks and Apartment Scholarship

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Apartments and Academia: Research Roundup

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It's the end of May, when college students across the country are concluding their studies for the year. Many of these students, especially those in the post-graduate levels of education, are enjoying a return to normal life following the completion of research, writing and thesis defenses. But for many of them, the final product of all their work will only be seen by their family, friends, and a handful of professors and academics. (They don't call it the "Ivory Tower" for nothing.)

As far as I'm concerned it simply isn't fair to do all that work for such a small audience. So today I'm going to be highlighting some recent dissertations and thesis papers created by Masters and Doctoral students from across the country, from a variety of disciplines, all focusing on some aspect of rental housing.

I don't know any of these authors personally and have no ties to any of the universities that sponsored their work. I don't necessarily agree with their methods or their conclusions. But each of these authors and their advisors did a ton of work and I think that someone out here should make an effort to recognize it. I found them by searching through databases of open access dissertations including ProQuest Open, Ebsco, NDLTD and Google Scholar and selected these in an attempt to show the breadth of rental industry scholarship. None of the essays linked below were trapped behind paywalls at the time this article went live.

I know that many of our regular readers were/are also in academia, so I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. If you're an author of one of the essays linked below and want to discuss your research let us know at @RentConfident on Twitter or Facebook, or drop us a note using our contact form.

Architecture:
Integrating Flexibility and Sustainability to Define a New Net-Zero Apartment Building Prototype
by Amber E. Galko, M.S.
The University of Arizona, 2015, 35 pages

Anthropology:
Defining success in low income housing: Why does it matter?
by Katherine S. Nutter, M.A.
California State University, Long Beach, 2016, 167 pages

Business:
Assessing the Relationship between Employee Training and Organizational Commitment in Rental Housing Management Firms
by Shawn R. Person, Ph.D.
Capella University, 2018, 182 pages

Economics:
The Economic and health consequences of lead paint abatement regulations
by Ludovica A. Gazze, Ph.D.
MIT, 2016, 172 pages

Education:
Resident Retention: Understanding and Predicting On-Campus Residents' Decisions to Return to Campus Housing
by Kyle David Smith, Ed.D.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2017, 201 pages

Finance:
Ranking of Mortgage Underwriting Criteria for Multifamily Rental Property
by Tejram Basdeo, D.BA
Walden University, 2017, 127 pages

Gerontology:
Intake Resident Assessments for Seniors Living in HUD-Sponsored Affordable Housing Apartment Communities
by Kiara Banks, M.S.
California State University, Long Beach, 2019, 58 pages

History:
Two Windows: The Tenants of the De Freyne Rent Strike 1901-1903
by Daphne Dyer Wolf, Ph.D.
Drew University, 2019, 328 pages

Social Service Administration:
Privatizing Chicago: The politics of urban redevelopment in public housing reforms
by Amy Turnbull Khare, Ph.D.
The University of Chicago, 2016, 319 pages

Sociology:
A policy to protect hoarders: An analysis of Fair Housing Amendments Act, 1988
by Mina Jahan, M.S.W.
California State University, Long Beach. 2015, 81 pages

Urban Studies:
The campaign for the tenant right to purchase in Greater Boston
by David Tisel, M.S.
MIT, 2018, 113 pages

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Published by

Kay Cleaves