The New York Times is releasing a series of data files with cumulative counts of coronavirus cases in the United States, at the state and county level, over time. We are compiling this time series data from state and local governments and health departments in an attempt to provide a complete record of the ongoing outbreak.

Since late January, The Times has tracked cases of coronavirus in real time as they were identified after testing. Because of the widespread shortage of testing, however, the data is necessarily limited in the picture it presents of the outbreak.

We have used this data to power our maps and reporting tracking the outbreak, and it is now being made available to the public in response to requests from researchers, scientists and government officials who would like access to the data to better understand the outbreak.

The data begins with the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020. We will publish regular updates to the data in this repository.

This layer shows the cumulative COVID-19 case count for each zip code in Chatham County, normalized per 100,000 residents. To protect the privacy of personal health information, data is not shown for a zip code with fewer than 5 cases. Data is from the Georgia Department of Public Health Coastal Health District. For more information, see here: https://covid19.gachd.org/covid-19-cases-by-zip-code/ Please note: Zip codes reflect the mailing address of the individual testing positive and may not have a relationship to where the person contracted the virus. Also, a long-term care facility in a zip code may contribute to higher counts than is reflected in the general population of that defined area.

Recovery data is not currently available. Therefore, this graph does not show the number of “active” cases, but instead represents the total number of confirmed cases, starting with our District’s first case on March 18.

As of March 10, 2023, the death rate from COVID-19 in the state of New York was 397 per 100,000 people. New York is one of the states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

This data set is EMBARGOED until noon ET Tuesday, June 29. This data is intended for print publication on or after June 29. A story will be filed under the slug US--Virus Outbreak-Rental Assistance.

Overview

The Center for Public Integrity in collaboration with the AP has collected detailed statistics from about 70 agencies that administered rental assistance programs in 2020 with money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund, part of the CARES Act. These figures show how much money these agencies planned to spend on rental assistance and how much they actually spent. We also have data showing how many households received assistance and how many applications were submitted.

An additional data sheet shows how much money was allocated for rental assistance from all sources (not just CRF money) per renter-occupied household in 2020 and statewide eviction rates in 2016, the latest available data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Findings

• All together, about 70 state and local agencies set aside $2.7 billion from the Coronavirus Relief Fund in 2020 for rental assistance programs. More than $425 million of that — 16 percent — was either reallocated for other COVID-related expenditures or remained unspent by March 31, 2021.
• Four states with comparatively high historic eviction rates allocated very little for renters in 2020. These states — Georgia, West Virginia, South Carolina and Oklahoma — are run by Republican governors.
• Onerous requisites, such as lengthy forms and extensive documentation requirements, prevented many applicants from accessing rental assistance funds. In New York, for example, tenants had to prove they were rent-burdened before the pandemic to qualify for assistance in the first round of funding; only $47.5 million wound up getting spent on rental assistance, out of $100 million allocated by the state legislature.

Methodology

The Center for Public Integrity started with a spreadsheet produced by the National Low Income Housing Coalition that showed every known rental assistance program in the United States as of Dec. 23, 2020. The detailed spreadsheet included how much money had been allocated per program and the source of those funds. Public Integrity isolated only the programs that were categorized as being funded by the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which was part of the CARES Act. We focused on the CRF because it was the largest single source of rental assistance in 2020. We contacted more than 70 agencies to find out how much money they wound up spending.

For the second set of data, we used the same NLIHC spreadsheet but tallied all allocations — regardless of funding source — for each state and divided that number by the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of renter-occupied households in each state (from American Community Survey table S2502, five-year estimate, 2015 to 2019). We also included the statewide eviction rates as of 2016 (the most recent available) published by the Eviction Lab.

Included Data

• 1-crf_programs.csv: Details for every known rental assistance program as of Dec. 23, 2020, that was funded by the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

  Columns A through E were collected by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and they show the following: Geographic Level; State; City/County/Locality, if applicable; Program Name; and Administering Agency.

  Columns F through L were collected by Public Integrity and the Associated Press. Those columns show amount of CRF money set aside in 2020, the amount spent on rental assistance by March 31, 2021, the amount reallocated or unspent by March 31, 2021, the percent unspent by March 31, 2021, the number of households that received assistance by March 31, 2021, the number of applications received by March 31, 2021, and notes about the data.

• 2-state_totals.csv: State-level totals for all known allocated rental assistance funding, regardless of funding source, along with the number of renter-occupied households in each state from 2015 to 2019, the statewide eviction rate as of 2016, and the amount of allocated rental assistance funding per renter-occupied household.

Caveats

• If your city, county or state does not appear to have allocated any money for rental assistance, check with your local and state officials or your governor’s office to find out if a program was indeed administered. We can’t ensure that every program wound up on the NLIHC’s original list.
• We only focused on programs that were categorized as being part of the Coronavirus Relief Fund, but your city, county or state may have had a rental assistance program with other sources of funding.
• The per-capita funding figures do not necessarily indicate that those state governments administered rental assistance programs. Some — or all — of that per-capita money could have been administered by local governments. For example, Georgia did not administer a statewide rental assistance program in 2020; the per-capita figure for Georgia reflects money spent in that state by local governments. For a full list of programs, visit NLIHC’s broader list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hLfybfo9NydIptQu5wghUpKXecimh3gaoqT7LU1JGc8/edit#gid=1851738141.
• Eviction rates were not available for these four states in 2016: Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Attribution

“According to data obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, The Associated Press and the National Low Income Housing Coalition”.

Contact reporter Sarah Kleiner at skleiner@publicintegrity.org.