In January, 2014, Data Driven Detroit (D3) purchased a license of the
Valassis Corporation's VNEF Plus database to receive quarterly updates of
address-level vacancy data. Though the address-level data are restricted by
confidentiality clauses, D3 processed and aggregated this database to the Census
block-level to provide high-resolution tracking of structure vacancy in Detroit
across time. The dataset contains data on the number and percent of vacant
structures (with whether a parcel contains a structure identified by Motor City
Mapping survey data) in each of the nearly 16,000 Census blocks in Detroit. The
data span the timeframe from Q4 2013 through Q4 2014.
Field description metadata and a narrative summary providing further
detail on the creation of the dataset are also available for download.