Location Queries: Finding Locations for Vector Data that Meet Criteria

[JeffSloan]

Hi Everyone, 

I am currently stock on a project that deals with home prices and income in a city and was hoping you may able to provide a bit of insight. I was able to gather census data that provides me with income and home prices by census blocks. I then was able to calculate the price of an 'affordable' home for the income of that census block. This has worked great where i can query which census blocks have affordable homes for residents of that area. 

But for the next step, I have a point layer I have created with major employers in the area. I would like to take the income for the location of that employer (via the census block it falls into) and then calculate how far an individual would have to live AWAY from that block in order to find an affordable home. I am completely stuck on how to calculate the distance because I'm not sure how to create a query that gives "Nearest census block where Average home price  <= X" (Where X is the the affordable home price for the income in the employer block). I'd also ideally like to see this in map format if that is possible. 

I'm not well seasoned with GIS, but I've spent a number of days trying to figure this one out and I'm having a rough time. Would anyone be able to provide me with a suggestion for how best to approach this problem?

Thank you so much!

Jeff 

[JoeBorgione]

Let me get this straight-

You have a point and you want to select the closest 'affordable housing' polygon, right?  There is the near command that if you have the proper license (advanced) should do what you want.  If you don't have that license level you could do a spatial selection of all the polygons with a specific distance of the employer location(s) and then do an attribute query on those selected polygons to find those that fall in the affordable housing range.

[JeffSloan]

Hi Joe - yes that's exactly right. I was looking at the near function and I didn't see that it had a way to query the features that I am looking to link to. I believe I have the proper licensing but perhaps I do not and that is why I see the restriction. I will try this command again and ensure I have the appropriate permissions. 

The selection process would also be great too. The only reason I was avoiding that is because I would have to do a manual selection for each of those points. Ideally, I wish I could automate this so when I click a polygon/point, it shows me the closest polygon to with my given parameters (so I could do it quickly for multiple locations), but I believe that would require some programming? 

Thank you!

Jeff 

[JoeBorgione]

but I believe that would require some programming?   Yep...

I'm not licensed here for the near or point distance tools and can't remember exactly how they both work.  I think you end up with a feature class in order of distance, and you would then make your selection based on that.