How to Create National HUD Assisted Housing Layers from A Picture of Subsidized Households

This document describes how to create GIS layers from the national level data files distributed as part of A Picture of Subsidized Households. HUD does not endorse any particular GIS vendor, but wanted to tailor these instructions to the most commonly used GIS software, ArcGIS by ESRI. There are two ways to map HUD Assisted Housing – at the property level (by point) or at the census tract or place level (by polygon). When you map by point, you are using the latitude and longitude derived by HUD’s geocoding process to create a point that represents a Public Housing Development, Public Housing Authority, Multifamily Housing Property, or Low Income Housing Tax Credit Project. Information on HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher program (formerly known as Section 8) is not disseminated with discrete locations. Due to privacy concerns, these data are summarized and disseminated by area (census tract or place). Data associated with the Public Housing, Multifamily and Low Income Housing Tax Credit programs are also made available at the census tract or place level. When you map by polygon, you are joining the tract or place summary file from A Picture of Subsidized Households to a census tract or place layer. HUD does not provide these basemap layers. You can use public available basemap layers such as TIGER or your own COTS basemap layers such as those provided by TeleAtlas.