The City joined the Affordable Housing Preservation Data Working Group in 2023. The working group meets monthly to identify, share, and propose data sources that are relevant to supporting affordable housing in Allegheny County. Representatives from DCP, PLI, and I&P participate in the working group. City presentations have included: vacant land management, City property catalog data sources made available via WPRDC, and Rental Registration. In these meetings, availability of open data, completeness, bias, and accuracy are discussed. Examples of data made open or available to share are discussed and proposed.

The community of stakeholders includes: Action Housing; Allegheny Conference on Economic Development; Allegheny County CountyStat; Allegheny County Department of Human Services; Allegheny County Division of Real Estate; Allegheny Land Trust; Community Justice Project; CREATE Lab; Department of Housing and Urban Development; Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania, County of Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania; Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh; Neighborhood Allies; Neighborhood Legal Services; Office of the Allegheny County Executive; Pittsburgh Foundation; Regional Housing Legal Services; Rent Help Pittsburgh; Rising Tide Partners; Steel Rivers Council of Governments; Tri-COG Land Bank; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh; Urbankind Institute; Women for a Healthy Environment; WPRDC; and other community experts.

Through this working group the WPRDC has developed HouseCat, a frequently-updated collection of data about subsidized properties in Allegheny County from approximately 20 different databases provided by HUD and the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA). Launched in April 2022, this tool allows people to view data for a property, and filter the data to display a subset of properties including those with low inspection scores and those that may have their subsidies expire in coming years. Users of the data explorer are also able to create watch lists of properties whose affordability is at risk. Properties can be viewed on a map, with data associated with each property displayed on screen. Housecat connects to Parcels N’At to show parcel-level characteristics of each property.