Examining Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) in Delaware

This repo contains all scripts and documentation related to out exploratory work on Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) assistance eligibility across Delaware.

Overview

Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) provides housing for families in a housing crisis in the US. However, the program struggles to provide vouchers to most qualified families. We built this app to help people learn how well the program is doing in Delaware.

We draw data from HUD and ACS.

We make the source code of this app publicly available so that anyone can see how we combine data and report findings. Please feel free to submit an issue if you notice any bugs or have suggestions.

App

• The main branch is deployed at https://techimpact.shinyapps.io/housing-voucher
• The explore page is directly accessible with this URL: https://techimpact.shinyapps.io/housing-voucher/?page=explore

Test App

• Each pull request is deployed at https://techimpact.shinyapps.io/housing-voucher-test
• The explore page: https://techimpact.shinyapps.io/housing-voucher-test/?page=explore

Project Structure

voucher-eligibility/
├─ data/
│  ├─ raw/
│  ├─ processed/
├─ docs/ # EDA is hosted here as a GitHub page
├─ src/ # Source code (mainly .R files)
├─ app/ # Shiny app 

Environment Variables

.Renviron

• CENSUS_API_KEY: API key to the Census API

For deployment to Shinyapps.io:

• SHINY_ACC_NAME: Account name on shiny
• TOKEN: Token from Shiny
• SECRET: Secret from shiny
• MASTERNAME: Name of shiny app on main
• TESTNAME: Name of shiny app on pull request

.Rprofile

There are two .Rprofile files in this repository

1. Root folder - a dummy file that loads the .Rprofile file in the app folder. This file will be loaded when opening the .Rproj file on RStudio.
2. app/ - the actual .Rprofile file that sets up the environment for Python. This folder is being deployed to the shinyapps.io. And thus, the real .Rprofile file will be loaded there as well.

The .Rprofile file sets the following environment variables:

• VIRTUALENV_NAME : Name for the virtual environment (default: voucher-eligibility-env)

• PYTHON_PATH : $PATH to python (the script will look for python on Windows, and python3 on Mac)

• RETICULATE_PYTHON : Path to python. The value is set only for shinyapps. On local, RStudio takes care of setting this value automatically and thus the scripts leaves it blank.