But what about the census data?

The census data is available in a lot of ways. Google will lead you easily to raw numbers and city web sites. This one will provide you with the census data for a particular neighborhood based on a property's address. Geocoding is what they call it.

http://www.ffiec.gov/Geocode/default.aspx

Minneapolis Neighborhood Services is pretty awesome for helping to find some of these materials.

Taxes past and present

Lookingup taxes and things like that can be fairly straight forward too. If you can type an address anyway.

http://www16.co.hennepin.mn.us/pins/pidsrch.jsp

Hennipem, Ramsay and Dakota counties all have excellent GIS maps with all sorts of interesting information about properties. Public records are sooooo accessible now. No skulking around in basements that say "beware of tiger" on the door. Sometimes. No one claims to have completely accurate information and some people are better at covering tracks.

the Matrix

Once you realize there is no spoon you look someplace else for the materials. Banks won't post them where they can be searched. But this Matrix convieniently puts first time programs into a nice little package. It is designed for Minnesota so sorry for the regionally specific stuff, but it might help you on your search terms.

http://www.hocmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Affordable-Loan-Products-Matrix-December-2012.pdf

This is off the Minnesota Home Ownership Center's website and explains a lot of the programs available (FHA, Start up, HFA etc).

Enjoy!