How has COVID affected NC home sales? Police stops? This new dashboard lets you know

The coronavirus pandemic has generated a flood of data, but most of it is focused on the familiar public health measures – the number of cases, rates of infection and COVID-19 deaths.

But the pandemic is affecting more than public health. It is reshaping the economy and changing social behaviors. Who is tracking that?

The University of North Carolina’s Department of City and Regional Planning has an answer: We are.

The department unveiled an online dashboard last week that examines pandemic-related patterns beyond public health. The new website, created with the help of coronavirus relief funding, is known as Carolina Tracker. It analyzes trends down to the county level that are as wide ranging as police stops, home sales, daycare enrollment and foot traffic to stores, restaurants and parks.

“I don’t think there is a dashboard tracking this many indicators (at the county level) over the last 12 months. We are pretty unique in that regard,” said Nikhil Kaza, an associate professor of city and regional planning at UNC. “Most of the data is available. It’s a question of assembling it to tell a compelling story.”

The dashboard is an important broadening of North Carolina’s view on how the pandemic is revealing economic and social disparities in the state and how it is shaping the North Carolina that will emerge from this public health crisis. While tracking COVID-19 is crucial, it’s also urgent to examine changes in social behaviors, education patterns and consumer trends. Vaccines will cut the spread of the disease, but it is data – refined, analyzed and clearly displayed through graphics – that should guide responses to what the pandemic has altered or exposed.

The Carolina Tracker is maintained by a team of about 10 doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty and consultants skilled in analyzing data, software engineering and knowledge of housing, transportation and economic development.

Some of the stories emerging from the data are already known, such as the pandemic’s disproportionate affect on lower-income minorities or the drop-off in restaurant visits. But other findings add nuance and insights into how disease, business restrictions and the economic fallout are altering the rhythms and balance of daily life in North Carolina.

For instance:

• An analysis of cellphone data shows visits to work offices remain nearly as low as at the start of the pandemic, while visits to bars and restaurants rose significantly and trips to parks jumped 40 percent above the pre-pandemic level.

• Housing sales are booming, but home construction permits are shrinking. The website says the slump in new permits suggests “a lack of confidence about the near-future state of the market on the part of developers.”

• Police stops fell sharply in March, rose over the summer and fell again in November as the biggest COVID-19 wave hit. The website breaks down the causes and the demographics of police stops by county.

• Evictions, once more common in urban areas, plummeted across the state with eviction moratoriums, but as those protections have expired the highest eviction rates are now in rural areas. A likely reason is a disparity in renter assistance programs.

The Carolina Tracker is making a narrative out of data from one of the most disruptive periods in North Carolina history. That will be an important resource for historians, but it also is useful to public officials by documenting how policy choices play out in social responses.

Nichola Lowe, a professor and interim director of the UNC Center for Urban and Regional Studies, said the Carolina Tracker will be “a tool for policymakers to communicate broad trends that may not be available in shareable form.”

She said, for instance, that the website could show how changes in the various phases of pandemic restrictions affected public behavior and the economy. And that view could be useful after this public health crisis passes. “This could inform state planning in the event of future emergencies,” she said.

For now, the Carolina Tracker is opening a new window on how the pandemic is affecting – and perhaps altering for years to come – life in North Carolina.

This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 2:23 PM.