Methodology

Where the numbers come from

Every figure we publish traces to a public primary source, and we link to that source rather than to a secondary write-up of it. The three standing sources are:

Research findings cited in analysis pieces link to the paper, the agency release, or the statutory text. Where a claim rests on someone else's estimate — the NAHB–NMHC regulatory cost figure, for instance — we attribute the estimate rather than presenting it as our own measurement.

How often it updates

The housing data dashboard is rebuilt daily by a scheduled job that re-fetches each source and re-bakes the site as static files. There is no live database and no client-side fetching: what you see was true at the moment of the last build, and every figure carries the date it was observed.

If a source fails or returns nothing, the pipeline keeps the last good data rather than publishing a blank or a zero, and the affected section shows when it was last successfully refreshed. The most recent successful refresh was August 23, 2026.

What we are authoritative for

We are authoritative for our own analysis and commentary on U.S. housing policy. We are not the authority for the underlying raw figures — for those, cite the primary source we link to. If you are quoting a mortgage rate, cite FRED; if you are quoting a bill's status, cite Congress.gov.

The Affordable Housing Initiative is an independent publication. It is not a government agency, not affiliated with one, and not an official resource of any kind.

Analytical stance

This publication argues from free-market economics — the Austrian and Chicago traditions. That is a stated position, not a hidden one, and readers should weigh it. We try to earn trust the only way a publication with a point of view can: by linking every factual claim to a source you can check independently, and by reporting figures that cut against our argument as readily as those that support it.

Where the evidence is genuinely contested, we say so rather than picking the convenient estimate.

Corrections and revisions

Articles carry both a publication date and a last-verified date. When a figure is revised at source — and economic series are revised routinely — the article is updated and its modification date changes with it.

Where several pieces covered the same question, they have been consolidated into one canonical article so the analysis lives at a single address; the retired URLs still resolve and point at the consolidated piece. Nothing is silently deleted.

If you find an error, it is worth reporting: a wrong number in a piece arguing for verifiability is a worse failure here than it would be elsewhere.

Reusing this work

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