HUD Posts NSP Competitive Grant Maps, Not Clear How Many Oregon Census Tracts Are Qualifying.

4 days AFTER the NSP competitive round NOFA was announced on May 4th, HUD published data maps after 2:30 PM EDT on Friday May 8th (when I left the house for the day).

Maps are on the NSP website HERE. ABOVE I pasted in a quick map using this new HUD tool, to show scores for several census tracts from areas adjacent to I-5 in N. Portland.

My quick read is that it does NOT appear to me that many have high scores using the 20 point scale found in the NOFA. (What that actually means in scoring of NSP applications I am not sure. On the surface none of these census tracts appear to be"qualified" , using the minimum score of 18 mentioned in the NSP2 NOFA-see bottom of page 14, top of 15).

On a related description of the methodology website HERE the description posted as of 6:45 PM EDT Friday comes with caveat, "A more detailed methodology will be posted shortly."

For now the description of ranking from the methodology page says:

• The "foreclosure" risk score is based on rank census tracts by two measures: (i) percent of foreclosure problems and (ii) number of foreclosure problems.
• Each tract receives the higher rank (from 1 to 20) from those two rankings.
• The "vacancy" risk score is based on an algorithm that combines 90-day vacancy rates with foreclosure problem rates and then ranks census tracts from 1 to 20 on this estimate.
• The NSP tool displays the average risk score for selected census tracts.
• The average score is color coded with red indicating high risk. HUD grants are available only for the high risk areas.
• The census tracts need not have high risk scores for both foreclosure rates and vacancy rates.

Bottom line, the maps are posted; a consolidated set of data is not, nor is a detailed description of the methodology.[One can find the underlying data for individual CT by clicking on the map, but no consolidated list for larger geographies has yet been posted].

At some point very soon, I hope that HUD posts an Excel spreadsheet with the scores of all Census Tracts that meet the qualifying threshold scores found in the NOFA.