County/State/Percent of population that received Supplemental Security Income in 2009

As you can see, Appalachia dominates the top 10 list. Kentucky is the number one state in this category. This may be explained by the fact that some states provide varying rates of additional supplementary income to those receiving federal SSI benefits, which may have an effect on the number of people who apply. Income levels also play a major role: Owsley County, Kentucky, which is the number one state in terms of percent of population receiving SSI, ranks in the bottom ten counties in the nation in median income, at $20,530 in 2009. A glance at the counties with the lowest rate of SSI recipients shows some of the wealthier places in the country, like Nantucket, MA; Teton, WY; Eagle, CO; and Pitkin, CO.

Do you want to learn more about this dataset or other features on PolicyMap? Join our free weekly trainings (Click Here) or send your questions to pmap@policymap.com.

Did you know that all users have a new and dynamic way to share maps on PolicyMap? We’ve recently added the Embed Map feature. An embed map is an interactive map that is displayed on your website, or any website, which a user can pan or zoom within the map.

Making an embed map to share is simple. After you have created the map you wanted to share, this can have the location set, data layer added, any customization you want with that data (e.g. change year, variable, edit ranges, or even color), and added the Add Sites you . Click on Embed on the bottom of the map:

This will give you the Embed Map options.

• First, you can choose if you want to share a static non-interactive map (Image) or a dynamic map that someone can pan and zoom in (Draggable).
• Second, choose the dimensions of your map, this is measure by pixels; a common size to share is Width 600 x Height 480.
• Finally choose to include a map title and/or a legend. These are helpful if you want to use PolicyMap’s description and labeling of data.

Once you set the options and click Embed, you will receive the HTML code to paste onto a website. It will look something like this:

<div style=”text-align:center”><iframe src=”http://www.policymap.com/embedmap_dyn?lqid=51654″ named=”embeddedmap” scrolling=”no” marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ frameborder=”0″ width=”700″ height=”375″ >Click here to interact with map.< /iframe><div style=”font:13px arial,geneva,helvetica,sans-serif”>Powered by <a style=”text-decoration:underline” target=”_blank” href= “http://www.policymap.com”>www.policymap.com</a>, an <a style=”text-decoration:underline”target= “_blank” href=”http:/ /www.policymap.com”>online mapping tool</a> and data warehouse.</div></div>

Don’t be too afraid if you’re not familiar with HTML or code. All you need to do is copy and then paste the text onto your blog, website, or discussion forum to share a map.

Here are some examples on the PolicyMap blog (www.policymap.com/blog):

• www.policymap.com/blog/2010/08/a-closer-look-cra-eligible-tracts-and-tract-median-family-income/
• www.policymap.com/blog/2010/06/a-closer-look-percent-of-votes-for-democrat-barack-obama-in-the-2008-presidential-general-election/
• www.policymap.com/blog/2010/08/top-10-falling-home-sales-between-2008-to-2009/

For more information, contact pmap@policymap.com or call us at (866) 923-MAPS. Join us in our free weekly online trainings, just choose a time and date from our trainings calendar. Read our Quick Start Guide to learn the basics of PolicyMap and jump right into using the power of data. If you wanted to know more about a feature or topic, send your request to info@policymap.com subject “Did you Know…”

Sincerely,

The PolicyMap Team

Here are side by side examples of a PNG printout and a JPG printout, and links to the original files.

As you can tell, the PNG files does offer smoother text and street lines, but remember the JPG files are a little smaller and still offer the unique ability to share data visually through maps.

We also added a new icon in your My PolicyMap to reflect the PNG file type. Now you can re-download any printouts by selecting

• the blue icon for JPG
• orange for PDFs
• and green icon for the new PNG files

You can rename any saved item in My PolicyMap by selecting

• the new Edit icon
• and delete any saved item by selecting the delete icon

If you would like more options for printouts our export files in PolicyMap, please make a suggestion in the comments below. We continue to add features built around the needs of our users, so your feedback and suggestions is greatly appreciated and definitely looked at. For more information on other features, please contact us at pmap@policymap.com.

Counties with the highest change in the number of residential homes sold between 2008 and 2009

The map and table above represents percent change in number of residential homes sold from 2008 to 2009. Data is from Boxwood Means, who does not account for inflation in this calculation. TRF has suppressed data in places with fewer than five sales in either year. Grey areas on the map show places where data is unavailable, incomplete, or suppressed. Data might be unavailable for several reasons, including the county not having a current data collection contract with the collection agency that supplies data to Boxwood Means, Inc., and there being no sales reported in a given place (in the instance of a non-residential tract, for example). For more on the accuracy of locating these sales on a map, and the extent of Boxwood Means, Inc.’s coverage, see Home Sale Data in the Data Directory.

Do you want to learn more about this dataset or other features on PolicyMap? Join our free weekly trainings (Click Here) or send your questions to pmap@policymap.com.

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.

In order to measure whether banks are providing credit to the whole of their communities, CRA looks for loans in low and moderate income areas, as well as areas experiencing economic duress, or that are underserved by banking institutions. PolicyMap now has these locations mapped, according to CRA specifications.

Low and moderate income Census Tracts are based on a comparison of tract median family income to area median family income. If the median family income of the tract is less that 50% of area median family income, then the tract is considered Low. If the tract median family income is greater than or equal to 50% and less than 80% then the tract is Moderate. If the Tract median family income is greater than or equal to 80% and less than 120% then the tract level is Middle.

Middle income tracts are not considered in CRA evaluation unless the tract is classified as distressed or underserved. Distressed middle income tracts are those with: (1) Unemployment rate at least 1.5 times the national average or (2) Poverty rate of 20% or greater or (3) Population loss of 10% or more between the 1990 and 2000 census, or a net migration loss of 5% or more between 1995 and 2000. Underserved middle-income tract are those designated by the Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture with an “urban influence code” of 7, 10, 11 or 12. Lists of these tracts are released annually and available on the CRA website at: http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/examinations.htm.

Go to PolicyMap now and see what tracts are considered in the CRA evaluation! The data are available under Money & Income > CRA Eligibility.

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.

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.

Glenmary serves the Catholic minority, by establishing a Church presence in areas where less than three percent of the total population is Catholic. Through outreach to the unchurched and testifying to the Catholic Faith in mission regions where a significant percent of the people have no church affiliation, it brings Christ’s presence to the poor, through outreach and work for social justice in counties where the poverty level is almost twice the national average.

For over 70 years, Glenmary has established and returned over 100 missions through the generosity of its donors. In support of these efforts, the Glenmary Research Center, along with other religious denominations, gathers Church membership data in consideration of accepting a specific geographic area for Church development. This collaboration with other religious organizations compiles county-specific Church membership information every ten years to coincide with the US decennial census.

Religious Congregations and Membership, 2000 (RCMS 2000) contains statistics for 149 religious bodies, providing information on the number of their congregations within each region, state and county of the United States. Participants included 139 Christian denominations, associations or communions (including Latter-Day Saints and Unitarian/Universalist groups); two specially defined groups of independent Christian Churches; Jewish and Islamic totals, and counts of temples for six Eastern religions.

An invitation to participate in the study was sent to every U. S. religious body listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. In addition, efforts were made to identify and gather data from large independent congregations. As a result of these efforts, which extended over a two year period, 285 groups were invited, 149 participated, 22 expressed the intention to participate but were unable to do so, 12 declined to participate and 102 did not respond. The 149 groups that furnished data reported 268,254 congregations with 141,371,963 adherents.

Most large Protestant denominations maintain national offices that receive statistical reports from their individual congregations; these reports were used to provide county membership figures for this study. On the other hand, many smaller groups, as well as those in which local congregations have a great deal of autonomy, only request and do not require such reports. This means that data for several groups is not as complete and current as might be desired.

Click on www.glenmary.org for further information.

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.