With the helpful feedback from our users, PolicyMap has recently added a new printing option. The PNG (or High Resolution) option allows users to print an electronic copy that might be slightly larger in size but offers more detail and a finer quality. The JPG printout still provides a quick and easy way to share maps, tables, Analytics from PolicyMap, and a PDF (which uses the JPG images) is formatted perfectly so you can simply print and insert into handouts.
Here are side by side examples of a PNG printout and a JPG printout, and links to the original files.
In a recent article, the New York Times reported this week that home sales have fallen to their lowest level in more than a decade. What places are being most affected by declining sales rates? PolicyMap has the answer, with our Boxwood Means home sale data, which is available down to the block group level .
CRA Eligible Tracts and Tract Median Family Income as a percent of AMI
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was passed by Congress in 1977 to encourage banks to extend credit to low and moderate income Americans. The Act was a response to redlining, a common practice involving systematically denying credit or increasing the costs of banking services to communities based on income, race or other discrimination. In practice, CRA requires that each bank’s lending records be evaluated periodically. This evaluation record is taken into account when the institution applies for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions. All depository institutions must collect the necessary data and submit reports annually.
The PolicyMap team is enjoying having NeighborWorks America in Philadelphia for their national training institute (NTI) and conference this week. Maggie McCullough and Katie Nelson participated in sessions earlier this week and will be talking about PolicyMap as part of a session tomorrow entitled “Using Data and Technology to Drive Strategic Decision Making in Real Estate.”
For the last year, we’ve been working with NeighborWorks’ Success Measures to enable neighborhood organizations to analyze the results of their community surveys geographically. By geocoding survey results, groups can begin to see if households with similar neighborhood opinions are clustered in certain blocks – and if those blocks are somehow different compared to the surrounding area. Pulling from the variety of indicators available in PolicyMap at a block group level, neighborhood organizations can see, for example, which areas have higher concentrations of people under the age of 18, which have aging housing structures, which have higher median incomes and more. Our goal has been to give them a geographic tool for evaluating survey data so they can integrate the results into their decision making process going forward.
One of our latest dataset is religious adherence, which contains rates of adherence by denomination and counts of denominations. We wanted to spotlight the Glenmary Research Center for providing such a great dataset.
Glenmary Home Missioners are a Roman Catholic society of priests and brothers who, along with coworkers, is dedicated to serving the spiritual and material needs of people throughout Appalachia, the South and Southwest. This ministry is concentrated exclusively within the United States and dedicated to bringing the Catholic Church to people who live in the small towns and rural areas of our nation.
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Read more about what The Reinvestment Fund is currently doing.
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In this issue: |
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Chase Partners with TRF to Finance Charter Schools
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TRF Finances New Supermarket-Anchored Retail Plaza
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Identifying Areas with Need for Supermarkets
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TRF Celebrates 25 Years and $1 Billion in Community Investment
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PolicyMap Widgets Take Off
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TRF CEO in the Spotlight
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Chase Partners with TRF to Finance Charter Schools
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This spring JPMorgan Chase announced a $325 million initiative to provide financing to high-performing charter schools. As part of this initiative, Chase is partnering with TRF to create a New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing pool. This commitment by Chase to the growth of charter schools expands TRF’s ability to finance strong schools, even in today’s challenging credit environment. Loans are available to finance real estate projects for high-performing, established charter schools that are acquiring, renovating or expanding their facilities. Charter schools that are replicating or expanding to additional locations are also eligible for financing. Facility projects must be NMTC eligible. To date, TRF has provided $184 million in financing to 64 schools serving over 30,000 students, with the majority of these students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.
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Last year, TRF financed a new facility for the Learning Communities Charter School.The NMTC transaction included a leverage loan and equity investment from Chase. With the new NMTC pool, TRF and Chase will be financing more high quality schools like Learning Communities.
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Community First Fund is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), an SBA guaranteed lender, and have received a high rating by the CDFI Assessment Rating System (CARS®).
Community First Fund has more than 16 years experience in providing loans, business training, and one-on-one counseling to entrepreneurs of all sizes, affordable housing and commercial real estate developers, and community groups in under-served communities in central Pennsylvania. We serve 13 counties with offices in Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, Reading, and Exton.
Check out the PolicyMap widget (here) which depicts all loans financed by Community First Fund since 1992 in their thirteen county region in south central and eastern Pennsylvania. These 855 loans total $36,141,712.86. The widget allows visitors to the website to explore the diversity of loans and the impact they have had across the region. Each loan is represented by a colored circle. By clicking these circles, users can learn more about the individuals the Community First Fund serves.
Learn more about widgets and how you can add a fully interactive map of PolicyMap on your website, click here. We have also created plenty of free widgets for you to add to your website right now! See what free widgets are available here.
Last time, we looked at the views of prisons that make up the most predominantly male census tracts. This time, we’ll look at some of the most female census tracts. As you may recall from the top 10 post on the subject, there are some prominent women’s prisons, such as the Danbury Federal Correctional Institute:
However, the top female census tracts also have some of the country’s prominent women’s colleges.
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Census Tract |
County, State |
Estimated percent of all people who are women |
| 560900 |
Wayne, MI |
100% |
| 110200 |
Cayahoga, OH |
99.21% |
| 211100 |
Fairfield, CT |
99.15% |
| 821200 |
Hampshire, MA |
95.5% |
| 822000 |
Hampshire, MA |
95.48% |
| 103602 |
Oklahoma, OK |
91.54% |
| 022500 |
Philadelphia, PA |
85.3% |
| 006803 |
Honolulu, HI |
85% |
| 000100 |
Calhoun, MI |
83.33% |
| 011798 |
Honolulu, HI |
80% |
PolicyMap loads foreclosure filing data each month for the City of Chicago and thought this article about condominium foreclosures from the Woodstock Institute might be of interest to our users:
CHICAGO—New foreclosure filings on condominiums are a rising share of foreclosure activity in the Chicago region, new data from Woodstock Institute show. New filings on condominiums in the six-county region grew by two percentage points from 17 percent to 19 percent of all foreclosure filings between the first half of 2009 and first half of 2010.
