Privacy

• Anonymous usage data. If you accept analytics in the consent banner, we log which pages you view, how long you stay, and whether interactions (clicks on a calculator, a save button) happened. We do not log your IP address verbatim; PostHog and GA4 both truncate IPs before storage.
• Account email. If you sign up, we store the email address you give us (so we can send the magic-link sign-in email) plus a hashed session token. We never store passwords — there are none.
• Saved ZIPs and calculator scenarios. If you save a ZIP to your watchlist or a calculator scenario, we store the ZIP code or the input numbers against your account.
• Newsletter subscriptions.If you subscribe to the newsletter, your email and the "source" of the subscription (which page placement) are stored at Beehiiv (our email-service provider), not on our servers.
• Operational telemetry.If a page errors, we send the stack trace to Sentry. Stack traces are truncated and never include the URL of a form submission. This runs regardless of consent — it's how we keep the site working.

• No behavioral-advertising profiles. We don't sell, rent, or share personal data with ad networks.
• No third-party sale of email addresses. Beehiiv holds your newsletter subscription; we do not share it elsewhere.
• No device fingerprinting. Page views are attributed via a first-party cookie (see below), not a fingerprint.
• No cross-site tracking. Our analytics tags fire only on housinghandbook.com.

• hh_consent— a necessary first-party cookie storing your consent choice (granted or denied) for 365 days. We can't honor your decision without this cookie.
• Analytics cookies(PostHog session ID, GA4 client ID) — set only when you click "Accept" in the banner. They expire when their underlying service rotates them.
• Auth session cookie — set when you sign in. Stores the encrypted session token. Cleared when you sign out or it expires.
• You can reset your consent at any time by clearing site cookies; the banner will re-appear on your next visit.

Accounts are optional. Sign-in uses a magic link emailed to you via Resend; we never store a password. Saved watchlist ZIPs and calculator scenarios live in our Neon Postgres database, encrypted at rest. They are visible only to you when you're signed in.

To delete your account and everything saved against it, email hello@housinghandbook.com from the address on the account. We'll confirm within one business day and delete within seven.

Subscribing to the newsletter sends your email to Beehiiv. They handle delivery, double-opt-in confirmation, and one-click unsubscribe (link in every email). You can unsubscribe at any time; doing so removes your email from Beehiiv and we never see it on our servers in the first place.

Sentry captures uncaught JavaScript errors and server exceptions so we can fix bugs. The captured payload includes the URL, browser, and a truncated stack trace. We don't capture form inputs, search queries, or saved scenario contents. Sentry runs regardless of your analytics consent because it is operational, not analytical.

• Opt out of analytics. Use the consent banner (clear site cookies to bring it back).
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter. Click the link at the bottom of any newsletter email.
• Delete your account + saved data. Email hello@housinghandbook.com.
• Request a data export.Same email — we'll send your saved ZIPs and scenarios as a JSON file.

California (CCPA/CPRA) and EU/UK (GDPR) residents: the rights above cover the "right to access, delete, and opt out" requirements. We do not sell personal information.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties for monetary consideration, and we do not share your personal information with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not engage in either practice as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

The third-party services we do rely on for the operation of the site — listed in detail in the “Third parties we rely on” section below — process limited data on our behalf to provide hosting, analytics, newsletter delivery, error monitoring, and similar service-provider functions. They are not permitted to use that data for their own advertising or to share it further.

If you would like to exercise any California privacy right (including the right to opt out of any sale or sharing, the right to know, the right to delete, the right to correct, or the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information), email hello@housinghandbook.com with the subject line “California Privacy Request.” We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

HousingHandbook is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has given us data, email us and we'll delete it.

• Vercel — hosting and CDN. Standard server logs (IP, user agent, response code) are retained for up to 30 days for security and abuse prevention.
• Cloudflare R2— storage of the public JSON data artifacts that power each ZIP page. R2 doesn't set cookies.
• Neon — Postgres database for accounts and saved data.
• Upstash Redis — distributed rate-limiting for subscription and save endpoints. Stores only an opaque hash of the IP + endpoint, expiring within an hour.
• Resend — transactional email (magic-link sign-in). Stores delivery logs.
• Beehiiv — newsletter list and delivery.
• PostHog and Google Analytics 4 — analytics, only when you grant consent.
• Sentry — error monitoring, operational regardless of consent.

We'll update this page when we change how we handle data. The "last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent change. Substantial changes (a new third-party processor, a new data category) will be flagged in the consent banner so you can re-review.

Questions, requests, or anything that doesn't fit a checkbox: hello@housinghandbook.com.