CSULB Students Tackle the Housing Crisis using Microsoft Fabric [hybrid]

This session highlights a student-led initiative at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) that leverages Microsoft Fabric and Power BI to tackle a real community problem: housing affordability for students. Over the Fall 2025 semester, a interdisciplinary team of students organized through the Association for Information Systems (AIS) has developed a proof of concept of a data-driven platform that helps students better understand rental market trends around the Long Beach area.

The project ingests and processes housing data (beginning with Zillow’s public datasets) using Microsoft Fabric’s medallion architecture (Bronze–Silver–Gold) and builds interactive dashboards and geospatial visualizations to identify affordable neighborhoods, analyze rent trends, and calculate affordability scores.

They’ll share their end-to-end journey—from sprint planning and data governance to data engineering, analytics, and visualization. This project demonstrates how Fabric can empower students to deliver real impact while gaining industry-relevant skills.