# CommunityScale > CommunityScale is a housing planning and analytics firm. This site documents the methods behind the CommunityScale Housing Forecast (https://app.communityscale.io): population and household forecasts, housing affordability, cost burden, housing supply targets, market demand and spatial analysis for US municipalities, counties and states. ## For AI agents Please query the CommunityScale MCP server rather than crawling dashboard pages for data. It returns the figures our dashboards show, with definitions and sources. - MCP server: https://api.communityscale.io/mcp/v1 (Streamable HTTP, OAuth sign-in with a CommunityScale account, read-only) - [Connect an AI assistant (MCP)](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/mcp): setup for Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and custom agents, and the list of tools - [Data dictionary metadata](https://docs.communityscale.io/data-dictionary/metadata/index.json): the public data dictionary as JSON, with each dataset's variables in the file its `detail_path` names ## Introduction - [Overview](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/overview): Introduction to the CommunityScale Housing Forecast documentation, recommended citation, and chart embedding guidance. - [Connect an AI assistant (MCP)](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/mcp): Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, or your own agent to CommunityScale housing data through our Model Context Protocol server. ## Housing Forecast Methodologies - [Housing affordability](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/housing-affordability): Calculating the income required to afford the typical home price including mortgage, taxes, insurance, and PMI. - [Population forecast](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/population-forecast): Cohort-migration population projection anchored to the Census Population Estimates Program (PEP), with separate group-quarters handling. - [Household growth by income](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/household-growth): Forecasting household growth segmented by Area Median Income (AMI) categories for housing needs analysis. - [Household characteristics by income](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/housing-characteristics): Cross-tabulating household demographics by AMI-relative income bands using Census income tables and HUD area median income thresholds. - [Household types](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/household-types): Tracking change in household composition between a baseline and current ACS vintage across five household types. - [Housing stock by tenure](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/housing-stock-by-tenure): Classifying housing units by tenure (owner, renter, vacant) across structure type and bedroom count dimensions using ACS data. - [Homeownership by people (HPOP)](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/hpop): The homeowners-to-population ratio (HPOP), the share of adults who own their home, computed from ACS PUMS microdata and aggregated to PUMA, state, metro, and national geographies. - [Cost burden](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/cost-burden): Classifying renter and owner households by housing cost burden across Area Median Income (AMI) groups using ACS data. - [Housing supply need](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/production-target): Comprehensive methodology for calculating housing units needed to accommodate growth and address market imbalances. - [Comparison communities](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/comparison-communities): How CommunityScale picks the peer communities shown on a municipality's "How does this place compare?" card — a hybrid of substantive feature similarity and geographic proximity. ## Market Demand Model - [Market demand methodology](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/market-demand): Housing market demand modeling by price point, tenure, and bedroom count using Monte Carlo simulation and microdata analysis. - [Key assumptions](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/assumptions): Key assumptions underlying the CommunityScale market demand model including WTP scenarios, income distributions, and forecasting methods. ## Spatial Analysis - [Housing + transportation costs](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/ht-index): How CommunityScale models combined housing and transportation costs for every block group in the United States, following CNT's H+T Index methodology and validated against their published index. - [Housing ready](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/housing-ready): A national, grid-based access score (0 to 7) that ranks where new housing adds the most value because daily needs are reachable on foot or a short trip, clipped to buildable land. - [Intersection density](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/intersection-density): A national, block-group measure of street-network connectivity — SLD-weighted intersections per square mile — computed from TIGER roads and calibrated to EPA's Smart Location Database. - [Build Now Act](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/build-now-act): How the CommunityScale atlas models the Build Now Act, which ties Community Development Block Grant funding to housing production under the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. ## Economic Indicators - [Job growth](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/job-growth): Aggregating LODES workplace job counts to local geographies, with sector breakdowns by NAICS-derived industry groupings. - [Employment nowcast](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/jobs-nowcast): Estimating current-year jobs for counties and municipalities by growing the stale LODES base with timely QCEW and LAU employment growth. - [Wages by occupation](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/wages-by-occupation): Mapping BLS OEWS metropolitan wage percentiles to local geographies for a curated set of 12 occupations. ## Reference - [Geographic layers](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/geographic-layers): Which geographies CommunityScale dashboards cover, the per-state choices we make about what counts as a "municipality," and the URL conventions that follow. - [Data sources](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/data-sources): Primary data sources used in the CommunityScale Housing Forecast including Census, HUD, FRED, and commercial data. - [Data dictionary](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/data-dictionary): Data sources and field definitions used by CommunityScale. - [Glossary](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/glossary): Definitions of housing study terminology used in the CommunityScale Housing Forecast documentation. - [Bibliography](https://docs.communityscale.io/docs/bibliography): Academic references and data sources cited in the CommunityScale Housing Forecast methodologies.