In cooperation with HUD, the US Postal Service is now releasing quarterly data on vacant and undeliverable addresses by Census Tract.  Where Buffalo and Erie County have been lacking a city-wide regularly updated primary data source on vacancy and abandonment rates, this data represents a powerful on-the-ground tool for tracking these trends at the neighborhood level. 

This data does not represent structures, but separate mailing addresses.  If there are two units in a house it would count as two addresses; if there are ten commercial offices in a single building, it would count as ten addresses.  HUD has not yet been able to determine from its conversations with USPS how, if, or when PO Boxes are factored into this information.

The data that the USPS does collect represents chronic vacancy, addresses that have been vacant (not collecting their mail) for 90 days or longer, as well as addresses deemed uninhabitable in their current state (referred to as No-Stat, see attached "Data Dictionary" PDF).  In addition, the overall number of addresses is also tracked, and the variances in this category provide a relatively good indicator of new-build or demolition activity.

The USPS has been sharing this data since the first quarter (the period of January 1 – March 31) of 2006 (Q1 2006), providing for a year-to-year comparison of current vacancy trends.  However, longer term historical change cannot be derived from this data set. 

A cursory analysis of this data reveals by the end of the first quarter of 2007 (Q1 2007) Buffalo had lost 1,692 deliverable addresses since Q1 2006, representing a decrease of 1.4% of the city’s total addresses.  During that time, the total number of all addresses fell 527, from 137,292 to 136,765 for a decrease of .4%.  After accounting for demolition activity, then, this translates to 1,162 more undeliverable addresses than last year at this time.

The data continues to reflect the uneven market conditions across the city.  While some areas experienced a large number of new vacancies, other areas remained stable or experienced an increase in addresses in service.  However, as the above statistics show, the aggregate gains are outweighed by the aggregate losses.  For example, the district roughly bounded to the west by Fillmore Avenue, Bailey Avenue to the east, to the north by East Delevan and the south by Clinton Street, has shown a significant decline, with some tracts showing a year-over-year decrease in deliverable addresses in excess of 10% and overall vacancy rates of nearly 40%.

Attached is a breakout of the Buffalo census tract information by quarter.  This data is drawn from the nationwide data that can be found on-line at http://www.huduser.org/datasets/usps.html.  Also attached is a beginning analysis of this data rearranged to show side-by-side and aggregated changes in several data categories.   Two crude maps, representing by census tract overall undeliverable addresses as a percentage of all addresses as of Q1 2007, and decrease in the percentage of deliverable addresses from units Q1 2006 – Q1 2007, respectively.