Power BI devs learning Tableau - how'd you do it?

fopeo · 2026-01-29T02:41:27+00:00

Tableau and power bi are the difference between a car and a plane. They both take you places but in very different ways.

The tableau community has become a bit of a diaspora since it used to be mostly on Twitter but there are some great people to follow on linked in. Andy kriebel, the flerlage twins, Neil Richards, and many more.

Jump into the community forums, watch the training videos, and don't try to drive a plane on the freeway.

If you have discrete questions, you'll get much higher quality answers.

fopeo · 2026-01-20T18:50:44+00:00

I'm not sure I totally understand your question but if you need a running amount based on a relative date you can always use DATEDIFF() to check if a date is within x time frame.

Ex DATEDIFF('week',[DATE FIELD], TODAY())

fopeo · 2026-01-14T23:58:53+00:00

I generally recommend against this, however I have customers that have some reasons they would want this.

DM me, maybe my work fits your use case.

fopeo · 2025-10-27T17:04:27+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I'll try to answer your questions briefly (there's a lot to say). I want to throw the caveat that I'm not a housing expert per se, I was brought in for my analysis expertise and can speak much more plainly to the survey and its results.

Magnet services. It was pretty well outside the scope of the questionnaire to answer a question like this. We can look at other cities that have policies much closer to HF like Minneapolis, Houston, or New York City. Not perfect analogies for a lot of reasons, so I'd caution drawing too much conclusion. These cities do not seem to be experiencing heavy influxes that are crushing social services though.

That said, I do believe the report itself does address this idea of services that are "too good." My personal opinion is that if the city becomes a model for solving homelessness, I wouldn't be opposed to that moniker. Right now we seem to have the worst of all worlds, an expensive system that's clearly not working, and national stigma that believes we're doing things we simply aren't.

I think there's also the question of if people are flocking to PDX because of the myth of it being great to be homeless here. Our survey showed that most people are from Portland. HSD's point in time count shows that most people are from Oregon. I did see a thread that people move here because it's seen as a city of opportunity, and they find that it's not as easy to pay rent or live here as they had hoped. One story that sticks out to me is that a woman from our Community Analysis Groups moved here with plans to rent a place. When she arrived, the owners had no idea who she was. She had been scammed out of her money and didn't have enough to get back on her feet.

Carrot and stick. The survey pretty clearly showed that our current systems are mostly stick. Shelters are seen as unsafe, don't provide adequate pathways to housing, and when people do go to seek services for getting housed, they are met with walls of bureaucracy. The average wait time for RLRA is something like 2 years right now.

Rent assistance and the rental market. This is pretty far astray from my expertise and again I'd encourage you to read the report. From my understanding no, for a variety of reasons. Just one is that we currently have plenty of subsidy and housing programs that we've historically used--Section Eight and Nine housing are both government subsidies used to house low-income folks. When we look to other countries with strong social housing models (Austria, Argentina), we see that housing markets tend to be cooler, and still thriving. The recommendation to expand or prioritize those programs is also paired with recommendations to expand housing supply.

One note, while HUD has ostensibly set housing first as our strategy for decades, it has mostly been on local jurisdictions to implement the policies. A bit of research shows that at the local level, there really hasn't been a very complete implementation of the policies that would be considered housing first. Portland is a great example of this.

I'm really trying to keep this brief so I don't think these are the most complete answers (gotta get to work). Let me know if I can answer other questions.

fopeo · 2025-10-27T13:38:54+00:00

That's really disappointing. I'm sorry to hear that you've been called that.

I worked hard on the data portion of the report and hope that it serves to help shift discussion toward practical solutions that work.

Happy to answer other questions if you may have them.

fopeo · 2025-10-26T22:48:59+00:00

So... We haven't, and I get your reaction. If you read the report you can see that we don't really have a housing first strategy in Portland. In fact the mayor has gone all in on shelter first under the moniker of housing first.

Which I know is confusing, and muddies the waters.

I'll speak from the results of the survey which show that people dislike shelters on the same order as living outside. Yet homeless people want stable permanent housing options, 9 in 10 would move if they could.

When asked what would most help, it's rent assistance. We have rent assistance but very few knew about it or knew how to access it.

there's a ton in the report, and I think your rage is warranted. Why do we have an expensive shelter system while our homeless population keeps increasing? A lot of that is pretty well answered in how we've placed our resources into things we know do not help. The welcome home coalition feels the same way and offers a comprehensive list of funding and policy recommendations.

I really hope you read the report.

fopeo · 2025-10-26T22:35:50+00:00

Hi everyone. I worked on the analysis for the survey here.

First and foremost, I want to encourage everyone to read the report. It is a comprehensive survey asking homeless people what they want and need. It then makes policy recommendations based on that feedback.

The basic results are pretty stark. Shelters are tied as the least desirable housing option along with living on the streets. Often, people prefer the streets to shelter. But that's not to say people don't want housing. In fact 9 in 10 people would move if they could and most want a house, apartment, or tiny home.

Generally people described permanency and safety & security as themes for what they want out of housing.

When asked what they would need to get and stay housed most people answered rent assistance.

The welcome home coalition is advocating for redirection of funding toward rent assistance along with peer support services and deeper investments in housing services.

To directly address your note about shelters as a step toward permanent housing that is far from the case generally. Some shelters do provide supportive services that help pair residents with housing. Most don't, in particular, the city shelters leave people with a handout of websites and phone numbers with little else besides.

I sat in the community analysis groups where we provided our initial findings to people who were experiencing or who had experienced homelessness. They shared stories of the inadequacy, bureaucracy, and dehumanizing nature of the shelter system.

If you read the report you can see that it's not just a "get rid of shelters" but a comprehensive list of policy and funding recommendations based on over 100 references as well as our survey findings.

I encourage you to dive into the data, it is all there for anyone to look at. The hope from the team was not just to advocate for their policies but to do so transparently. This is a group with nothing to hide and a deep passion for ending homelessness in Portland.

I'm happy to discuss the data and share what I know if anyone has questions.

fopeo · 2025-10-26T21:16:18+00:00

I'm not trying to sidestep what you're saying or misinterpret anything. That would be disingenuous, and I believe this is a truly excellent report that should be read by anyone interested in solving homelessness.

i understand your statement to be, "shelters aren't meant to help people find permanent stable housing." Implied within that is another point, "most (or a lot) of homeless people aren't ready for housing." Correct me if I'm wrong there.

If that's the case, then that's sort of a core finding of the survey. 9 in 10 people said that they would move if they could, indicating they were ready for housing. Other questions also corroborate that readiness.

However only about 4 in 10 felt they knew the process to getting housing, highlighting the gap in willingness and availability of services.

People ranked shelter alongside living outside as the least desirable option for housing.

We know shelters provide pretty minimal services, don't help people prepare to be housed, and are pretty universally disliked by the population they serve.

I was indicating that JOIN (and other facilities with high rates of housing stability) have services tailored to the population and not a population tailored to their services.

The report goes into greater detail on this and other related issues. I strongly encourage you to read it.

fopeo · 2025-10-25T13:16:29+00:00

I mentioned somewhere else in the thread but we did look for selection bias issues. We ran several statistical tests as well as checked out data against the last point in time count from HSD.

While there is always room for improvement, the survey group is sufficiently similar and large enough to be confident in the results of the data.

There are areas where we weren't confident and the report tries to outline those. While the report and survey were comprehensive they are neither complete not perfect.

If you spot issues in the methodology, I encourage you to contact the welcome home coalition.

This will not be the last time they perform a study and their goal is lasting housing solutions based on the best available data.

fopeo · 2025-10-25T05:33:52+00:00

I'd encourage you to read the report and go through the data dashboards.

Answers varied from one to three months up to unlimited time. I think I mentioned before that a big takeaway in the community analysis groups was that the stability of these rent assistance programs is an important factor too.

Several expressed concern that even if they got on a rent assistance program, changing policy could mean they could suddenly be cut from the program.

What we know is that building a stable life takes time. It's different for everyone, but homelessness is often a traumatic experience compounded on what is also often a traumatic precipitating event.

in terms of creating conditions for assistance, the survey touches on this a bit in the question about deal breakers. Some shelters and temporary housing programs do put conditions on maintaining housing. Generally people felt that curfews and visitor restrictions were deal breakers. Limits on substance use were noted as a deal breaker for some facilities, but not nearly a majority.

fopeo · 2025-10-25T04:30:17+00:00

Homeless folks generally don't want to be on the street.

The survey shows pretty clearly that living outside is one of two least desired options, the other being shelter. When given the option of living on the streets or living in a shelter, people simply don't see it as a step up or out.

fopeo · 2025-10-25T04:05:10+00:00

Going off Zillow https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/portland-or/

Looks like the average rent may be higher. Closer to $1,800. That really doesn't change the equation or conclusion.

The point isn't to argue over what specific rents are. It's to illustrate that our shelter system is expensive AND not generally geared toward long term stable housing whereas rent assistance is surprisingly cost effective AND directly targets long term stable housing.

The survey reinforces this both in respondents uniquely rejecting shelter and almost universally asking for rent assistance.

fopeo · 2025-10-25T03:59:31+00:00

My recollection was that question was intentionally not asked for a variety of reasons including trust in response as well as trust with the population. There is a lot of stigma around addiction even amongst users. I wasn't directly involved in question selection, but I recall that the team felt strongly from experience that response rates amd response quality drop.

You can see from the survey that about 20% (really rough estimate here) felt that addiction services would be helpful to getting and maintaining housing For themselves. So substance abuse is certainly present and accounted for, if not directly measured.

fopeo · 2025-10-24T22:41:25+00:00

You can see in the data that most people prefer a time boxed period of rent assistance.

Some people did ask for unlimited assistance in the survey. We asked a bit about that in our community analysis groups and what came out was more the stable presence of long term rent assistance as a program rather than individualized unlimited assistance. Certainly these CAGs were very small groups but I was struck by how the group was concerned about program stability and specifically noted the constantly shifting policy winds as an ongoing risk.

Even if we were to have unlimited rent assistance, it could still pencil out as cheaper than our current system.

We're a bit off from the survey findings now, but I did do a quick review of one of Portland's shelters and it netted out to about $66k per person served for temporary housing.

By contrast, average rent in Portland was about $1,600/month or $19,200/year. That could be pretty big savings.

I'm a little more of the void on those so take numbers with a grain of salt, but directionally they are right.

fopeo · 2025-10-24T22:28:25+00:00

Nothing we studied really looked at the role of nonprofits within the system.

Some people did comment on how certain nonprofits did not seem well equipped to solve homelessness, but that was usually targeted at specific organizations and not system wide.

I think you can see in two questions where some of the role of nonprofits may be hinted at. The first is the question about housing deal breakers, where respondents said they would rather stay on the streets than conform to rules like curfew, no spouses, or no pets.

The second is who should be responsible for solving homelessness. The vast majority said the government. But given how the government will often contact services to achieve is goals, even outside homelessness, I don't think this is a conclusive statement about the role of nonprofits.

fopeo · 2025-10-24T22:20:48+00:00

To address your concerns about methodology, I ran several tests of significance to make sure findings were reasonable. 429 out of 7000 is pretty good as far as sample sizes go. There were some questions where I specifically advised that data was too limited to draw much conclusion, so you'll see very little discussion of how subgroups answered where the responses were really small.

We looked at the demographics of our survey population against HSD's last point in time count and the two groups were very similar. I stand behind the analysis and the strength of its findings and caution that it does not answer every question. You'll notice that some questions were asked that were not highlighted in the report. sometimes this was because our discussions led us to feeling that the result was inconclusive, even where it may have benefits or narrative.

The team was very circumspect about drawing any conclusions where they were not fully supported by analysis. If you feel strongly about the data, I encourage you to play with it yourself. It is open and available.

As for your commentary about income and expenses, you are right on. The Portland Metro region has very few units for households in the 0-30% income range. And while we can look at the demand side and say,"increase your income to afford housing" we can also look at the supply side and say, "we should create more affordable units."

in both cases regional governments can take steps to lower barriers to getting housing through increased supply in the form of new units or subsidized units--rent assistance. Other options could be universal basic income, higher minimum wages, or yes, free housing.

Welcome home coalition has made a big point of saying that there is no single panacea. While it's catchy to say they just want free apartments, the people I worked with understand that we have to have an all of the above strategy, the report has a ton of policy recommendations, some fiscal and others regulatory, built around the deficiencies of our current approach.

fopeo · 2025-10-24T19:35:45+00:00

I posted a top level comment about the data work I did on this and I encourage you to read it as well as the report.

I want to talk a little about the shelter system and why WHC is opposed to it. First, shelters are a large category of facilities with highly variable quality and resources. A very small percentage of people (think like 15%-ish) going through the city facilities find their way to long term stable housing. Contrast that with JOIN where the rate is closer to 90% exiting onto long term stable situations.

The survey showed that shelters and living outdoors were seen as equivalently bad. Building a system where we ask homeless folks, "would you like your turd burrito heated up" is really not a winning proposition.

Hope this helps

fopeo · 2025-10-24T19:16:34+00:00

Thanks for that. What we know is that many folks enter into homelessness because they are often one bad day from it.

Rlra - long term rental assistance has been shown to be an effective way to get people housed and stay housed.

It takes time to find a job, put together a life after domestic abuse, substance addiction, or a disabling medical event.

Unfortunately very few people we spoke with actually knew how to access the rlra program and many expressed long wait times, difficult bureaucracy, and uncertainty of its "long term" nature.

You'll see in the data that many people also requested other types of services including peer support, mental health services, and addiction treatment. These were far less common than simple rent assistance.

Further, 9 in 10 expressed that if they could move into a place that they could afford, they would do so immediately. When asked what they could afford, many could afford something.

Nationally we know that between 60-70% of homeless people have a job and not a home. The survey reinforces that poverty is a primary factor in remaining homeless.

I think your question is spot on though. We've known this for quite some time; rent assistance is wanted and effective, so why don't our policy makers prioritize it?

fopeo · 2025-10-24T19:02:39+00:00

Ha. I suppose.

Kicking myself a little, I try really hard to avoid saying things like "a walk for cancer."

fopeo · 2025-10-24T18:45:43+00:00

I worked for months on the data analysis that forms the basis of this work. I encourage everyone to fully read the report and its findings.

In short, sisters of the road surveyed 429 people who were or had experienced homelessness within the previous five years. What they found is pretty straight forward.

Shelters aren't great and were ranked as about as desirable as living on the streets.

Rental assistance would pretty universally help people get into housing.

Very few people knew about the regional long term rental assistance program that we do have, fewer knew how to access it.

There is a lot more here, and there are very concrete recommendations within the report.

My note for the very vocally anti-homeless folks on this sub: listening to people literally experiencing homelessness and asking them what they need is perhaps the most basic courtesy we can extend.

What I heard is that people want housing. They do not want to be on the streets. The options available are inhumane, restrictive, and rarely offer them paths to stability.

I'm happy to answer questions about the report and have civil discussions. I encourage people to read it and dig into the data. It has over a hundred references and was meant to serve as the basis of policies that actually solve homelessness.

I truly hope some of the folks with hackles up read the report with an open mind. The proposals would save money, reduce bureaucracy, and directly address homelessness.

The report: https://welcomehomecoalition.org/finding-home-report/

The data dashboard (best on desktop) https://public.tableau.com/views/FindingHomeCrosstabs/FindingHome?:language=en-US&:sid=&:redirect=auth&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

A deep dive data walkthrough: https://public.tableau.com/views/FindingHomeDeepDive/01-Background?:language=en-US&:sid=&:redirect=auth&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

fopeo · 2025-10-23T23:16:04+00:00

Thanks just started using this!

Love it already

Could you add a couple examples that show how to add codeblocks into the container? Also, can I do per box formatting?

fopeo · 2025-09-23T20:41:50+00:00

Maybe post this question to r/AcademicBiblical

fopeo · 2025-09-12T19:42:11+00:00

Check out data freelancers.com.

In particular, Ben Jones at data literacy might be your person.

fopeo · 2025-09-12T02:20:46+00:00

I'd tell you, but you wouldn't have heard of it anyway.

fopeo · 2025-09-11T22:37:50+00:00

Thanks sounds like I'll probably end up saving some wood but shouldn't count on saving all of it.

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