Identifying Housing Patterns in Pima County, Arizona Using the DEYA Affordability Index and Geospatial Analysis

Abstract

When the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed 47 years ago, the United States was in the midst of the civil rights movement and fair housing was identified as a pillar of equality. While, progress has been made, there is much work that needs to be done in order to achieve integration. As a country, the United States is a highly segregated country. It is important to understand the factors that contribute to this and it is important to understand the relationships that exists between them in order to attempt to solve the problem. While the legal barriers to integration have been lifted choices continue to be limited to families of color that lack the resources to live in desirable neighborhoods. The ultimate goal of this study is to examine the relationship between the impact of individual indicators and housing patterns in the greater Tucson/Pima county region. An affordability index, the DEYA index, was created to determine where affordability is at its highest. The index includes different weights for foreclosure, Pima County spending on affordable housing, the existence of Pima County general obligations bond affordable housing projects, land value and inclusion in the community land trust. Once this was determined a regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between affordability and individual factors that may be affecting integration. The indicators used were broken down into 3 categories: the categories were education, housing and neighborhoods and employment and economic health.