This project is a result of a grant for undergraduate research won through UMKC. I looked into home loan rates in Kansas City and how they affected different racial and minority groups. The keystone of the study was developing a way to research gay and lesbian denial rates, which had not been done before and is not available through the HDMA data that was used for this project. I won the distinction as a UMKC Research fellow for my work.
Above is the poster presented at the UMKC Research Synapses, it walked though my research process and expands on evidence found in the work. The results of this study show that access to transportation is the biggest indicator of if someone will get approved for a loan. Residents living near public transit or have a reliable way to get to work have a higher approval rate then those who don’t.
Looking at how denial rates differ by sexuality was at the center of this project. There has been very little research done on this topic and it was a subject that interested me. I developed a novel way of filtering data to give us accurate results when it came to the sexuality of applicants, which allowed me to produce the maps above.
