@ Lloyd: Two completely different issues. A landlord like Pamiko did not put much money at all into his properties. And there is enough of an appearance of wrongdoing to indicate the potential of fraud. Along with the University of Minnesota’s CURA program, I worked on a research project that identified all the ARM loans originated in north Minneapolis in 2007 (the last peak year for such loans). Virtually none of them were owned by Fannie/Freddie. But yes, I am equally outraged that many of the mortgage lenders, servicers, and other investors who profited from the origination of predatory loans are not doing nearly enough to address the problem.

That doesn’t let slumlords off the hook, however.

You just have to be careful judging someone’s character by their economic data. No good can come of it.

You ask a lot of they city to not only provide you the data but also process and analyze it in the manner you want. As you point it, it is pretty easy to get the data visualized in a manner that provides more insight on certain aspects of analysis. It’s unreasonable to expect them to know how a particular user wants to visualize the dataset, however. Thus the solution is to release the data and let the users analyze it how they like.

Watchdog groups and and citizens can and should explore the data and find meaningful relationships. They should also share their methods and results with both the people and the agency producing the data.