Housing, Socioeconomic, and Racial Data in Consistent Neighborhood Geometries for 65 Cities Mapped by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, 1940 – 2019

Abstract

This data descriptor outlines the methods used to produce historical housing, economic, and racial data at the neighborhood level for 54 urban areas that were mapped by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). The output data—available for download via Open Science Framework (OSF)—spans the decennial census years 1940 to 2010, plus the 2015–2019 American Community Survey (ACS), and it comes in two harmonized geographies: HOLC neighborhood boundaries and 2010 vintage census tracts. For each of the years and geographies in this dataset, the output variables include the total population, white population share, Black population share, non-white/non-Black (other) population share, total housing units, proportion of housing units that are single-family detached, proportion of housing units that are occupied, proportion of occupied housing units that are that are owner-occupied, median home value, median contract rent, and median household income. These outputs are provided in the linked OSF repository as CSV files with an accompanying GeoPackage.