In October 2026, homelessness came up in more than a third of the US public meetings Audioscrape transcribed, affordable housing and artificial intelligence in about a third each, and property taxes and data centers in more than a quarter. The table below counts, for ten local issues, the share of transcribed council, county board and commission meetings in which each was said out loud at least once, for October 2026 and for May to September 2026 together. Search any issue to read what was said.
October 2026 at a glance
| Issue | Meetings in October | Share, October | Share, May–September | Bodies discussing it in October |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homelessness | 396 | 36% | 33% | 190 |
| Affordable housing | 353 | 32% | 30% | 178 |
| Artificial intelligence | 340 | 31% | 30% | 188 |
| Property taxes | 323 | 29% | 35% | 183 |
| Data centers | 286 | 26% | 31% | 161 |
| Immigration | 238 | 22% | 20% | 125 |
| Federal funding | 218 | 20% | 19% | 134 |
| License-plate cameras | 121 | 11% | 14% | 80 |
| E-bikes | 77 | 7% | 6% | 58 |
| Short-term rentals | 74 | 7% | 6% | 53 |
October: 1,103 transcribed meetings. May to September: 2,377. Counts as of 7 November 2026.
What stands out
- Homelessness and housing lead, and held steady. Both came up in about a third of meetings from May to September and again in October.
- Property taxes fell back after the summer. From 35% of meetings in May to September to 29% in October.
- Data centers came up less often in October than in the summer (26% against 31%), still in 161 bodies. The longer story, with links to the moments: what councils and county boards are saying about data centers.
- Artificial intelligence is now routine business. It came up in nearly a third of meetings, in contexts from cybersecurity and staff tools to permit-review software and AI data centers.
- Immigration came up in more than one in five meetings, including public comment and debates over local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Read the meetings yourself
Search any of these issues on Audioscrape to read the passages, each with the body, the date, the speaker where the transcript names one, and a link to that moment in the official recording. Set an alert on the search to get an email when a new meeting mentions it, or ask in ChatGPT or Claude: “What did county boards in Texas say about property taxes in October? Link the moments.”
Method
- Meetings: every public meeting of a US city council, county board, planning commission or other public body in Audioscrape’s record, dated in the month, with a transcript, each recording counted once. The bodies are listed at /gov. Bodies Audioscrape does not transcribe are not counted.
- Match: a meeting counts for an issue when its transcript contains the issue’s words as whole words: “homeless”, “homelessness” or “unhoused”; “affordable housing”; “artificial intelligence” or “AI”; “property tax(es)”; “data center(s)” or “data centre”; “immigration” or “immigrant(s)”; “federal funding”, “federal funds” or “federal grant(s)”; “license plate reader(s)” or “camera(s)”, “Flock Safety” or “Flock camera(s)”; “e-bike(s)”; “short-term rental(s)”. One passing mention counts, so a share says how often an issue comes up, not how long it was debated.
- Checks: random samples of matching passages were read by a person; for “AI” and “immigration”, the noisiest terms, nearly all were on topic.
- Late meetings: some October meetings are still being transcribed, so October counts can rise a little. Shares are rounded to whole percent.
This index is updated monthly.