README.md

metadata

title: NYC Voucher Housing Navigator
emoji: 🏠
colorFrom: blue
colorTo: green
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: 5.42.0
app_file: app.py
pinned: false

NYC Voucher-Friendly Housing Collector

A Python tool for collecting housing listings that accept housing vouchers (Section 8, CityFHEPS, etc.) in New York City. This tool uses legitimate data sources and APIs rather than web scraping.

Features

• Collects listings from official sources:
  • HUD Affordable Housing Database
  • NYCHA (NYC Housing Authority)
  • Legitimate rental APIs
• Filters for voucher-friendly listings
• Respects terms of service and anti-scraping measures
• Provides manual data collection guidance

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/voucher-housing-collector.git
cd voucher-housing-collector

2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Run the main script:

python legitimate_collector.py

This will:

1. Collect listings from all configured sources
2. Filter for voucher-friendly listings
3. Display results in a readable format
4. Show manual data collection options

Data Sources

The tool uses the following legitimate sources:

• HUD Affordable Housing Database
• NYCHA Property Information
• NYC Housing Connect
• Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program

Why Not Scraping?

Web scraping platforms like Craigslist is problematic because:

• Strong anti-scraping measures (403 Forbidden errors)
• Rate limiting and IP blocking
• Terms of service prohibit automated access
• Captcha challenges
• Dynamic content loading that breaks parsers

Instead, this tool focuses on legitimate data sources and APIs that explicitly allow programmatic access.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.