The homework that was due Thursday was actually pretty tough. It requires every single procedure that we covered to be able to complete. Many of you I understand were having/are having problems completing it. Here are some steps to help you on your way.

1. First Let's Handle the HUD Properties
1. Download HUD foreclosure property listing for Fort Worth
2. Clean the downloaded HUD table by removing all illegal characters from header row.
3. Geocode addresses using GPS Visualizer
4. Add lat/long coordinates back into Excel sheet, finish cleaning and delete any unnecessary fields, and save as an .XLS Excel file.
5. Add Excel to ArcMap
6. Display XY Data for the HUD properties, making sure you specify Geographic/World/WGS84 as the coordinate system.
7. Export to a new shapefile
2. Now Let's Focus on the Average Mortgage Debt
1. Download the data from SimplyMap (This variable is listed in: Census 2010 Estimates/Supplemental Data/Financial Assets and Debt/Average Mortgage Debt, 2010) Remember, a helping video can be viewed here.
2. Open table in Excel and clean header row.
3. HUGE TIP: Ensure the block group geoid field and and fancy formatted fields (such as with dollar signs) are reformatted as numbers with no decimal places. To do this, right click on the fields and select Format Cells and change the type to number and the number of decimal places to zero (none).
4. Save as an .XLS Excel file and bring into ArcMap
3. Now Let's Grab that TIGER Census Block Group File
1. Head on over to here to grab it as usual.
2. HUGE TIP: Even though the SimplyMap data are 2010 estimates the geographies used are still 2000! So grab the 2000 block group TIGER file, and not the 2010!
3. Unzip and add shapefile to ArcMap
4. Moving On, Let's Join SimplyMap Table to TIGER Shapefile
1. HUGE TIP: Try as you might, you will be unable to straight-away join the shapefile to the SimplyMap data due to incompatible field types, so we need to fix this before we can join.
1. Open TIGER file attribute table. On top left corner is a button that opens a menu when clicked. Select Add Field. Name the field as you wish, but ensure the field type is a Double.
2. Right click on your newly created field and select Field Calculator. In the calculator, double-click the unique identifier so that it appears in the box below.
3. Run it and close the attribute table when completed.
2. Now you can easily join the table to the shapefile basing the join on your newly created field. Remember to right-click on the shapefile to base the join.
3. Export your temporary join.
5. Now We Need Some Buffs, Right?
1. Buffer your exported HUD shapefile by 1-mile.
2. ArcToolbox/Analysis Tools/Proximity/Buffer
6. Oh Snap, Final Step Already? OK, Then Let's Spatial Join!
1. Right-click on your newly created buffer layer and spatially join it to the exported block group shapefile. Remember to check the Average checkbox.
2. Open the attribute table of your newly generated spatial join file and voila! Scroll to the right and you should see your data. Sort descending and the one at the top is the winner.