This paper discusses two projects that have arisen from my organising work with grassroots housing justice organisation Action for Public Housing (A4PH). The first project is an attempt to quantify the extent of accommodation loss due to vacancies in public housing that result from redevelopment, disrepair, and planned disposal (i.e. privatisation). It was motivated by A4PH members’ anger at vacant dwellings within their apartment complexes and wider neighbourhoods, set against government claims that increasing social housing supply necessitated the displacement of sitting tenants. The second project is a digital map that records public housing sell-offs, past and planned estate redevelopment projects, and potential sites where new public housing could be built. A work-in-progress inspired by the Save Public Housing Collective, the map utilises existing research data to create an interactive visualisation of the upheaval of public housing in New South Wales and its possible alternatives. Considered together, the two projects provoke questions about the potential of quantitative data within justice struggles and the possibilities that quantitative research offers and receives through engagements with activism. I argue for quantitative research that departs from an objective and detached disposition and rejects liberal ideals promising that ‘better data leads to better policy’, and instead aligns with the political strategy of movement building. Such an alignment is beneficial for those movements but also brings new research problems questions to the surface.