Challenge
The City of Philadelphia needed a more efficient way to fill out federal grant applications, which typically require aggregating numerous indicators from multiple data sources to specific geographies.
Solution
The City began using PolicyMap for grant applications, but that was just the start. The Philadelphia Division of Housing and Community Development worked with PolicyMap to create a custom report that supplies up-to-date information needed for quarterly reports to HUD to meet the requirements for the Choice Neighborhood grant, which provides funding to revitalize neighborhoods with distressed public or HUD-assisted housing. City employees quickly realized that PolicyMap not only helped improve their grant reporting process, but was also valuable for aiding in research and creating maps to support major strategic plans, such as the Assessment of Fair Housing. The City added local indicators, and now employees in all different departments can quickly access and download data, create maps of indicators, and compare neighborhood changes with city and national benchmarks.
