# Presentation: 687378

## Housing Data Produced by the U.S. Census Bureau

## Key Considerations When Thinking about Using Data

- Geographic detail
- Characteristic detail
- Frequency of data collection

## Sources of Housing Data

- Demographic Directorate:
- American Housing Survey
- Housing Vacancy Survey (Current Population Survey)
- Survey of Market Absorption (SOMA)
- New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey
- Residential Finance Survey (RFS)
- Property Owners and Managers Survey (POMS)
- Decennial Directorate:
- Decennial Censuses
- American Community Survey

## Sources of Housing Data (cont)

- Economic Directorate:
- New Residential Construction (building permits, housing starts, and housing completions**)**
- New Residential Sales (new one-family houses)
- Construction Price Indexes(new one-family houses sold and under construction)
- Characteristics of New Housing (single-family and multi-family units started and completed)
- Construction Spending (value put in place)
- Residential Improvements
- Manufactured Housing
- Census of Construction

## The Nation’s housing
Its size and characteristics
Its use and occupancy
Its condition and neighborhood
Its financial characteristics
Monthly housing costs
The ratio of costs to household income
And characteristics of the household

- Its size and characteristics
- Its use and occupancy
- Its condition and neighborhood
- Its financial characteristics
- Monthly housing costs
- The ratio of costs to household income
- And characteristics of the household

** **

- The American Housing Survey Covers

## How is the survey conducted?

- We interview in person or by telephone
- Using laptop computers
- And the same homes are revisited year after year
- Providing a history of housing in America

## Just some subject areas

**Just some subject areas**

- Neighborhood quality/problems

- Residential alterations and home repairs

- Household education, income, demographics

- Costs and Finance

- Structure and Equipment

- The homes people left, and why they moved

## Household Characteristics

## Some Other Household Characteristics

- Age
- Children
- Education
- Race
- Hispanic Origin
- Tenure (own/rent)
- Nativity/citizenship (immigrant status)
- Income

## Structure & Equipment:Structure Type

- Multi-family homes are less common
-       -  only 24% of units were in multi-unit
-           buildings
-       -  most in buildings with less than 10 units

- Manufactured (mobile) homes account for 7%
-  of our housing

- The single-family home is the most common
-  (61.6%)

- NOTE: Units (or households) _not_ Buildings

## Appliances

## Housing deficiencies

**Housing deficiencies**

## A second bath has become much more common:houses have been getting bigger

- 	    _1974_	_2001_
- Less than 1     3.7%      0.6%
- 1 		     62.9%     39.6%
- 1 1/2             12.9%     15.6%
- 2 or more      20.5%     44.2%

## Some Other Structure & Equipment Measures

- Year structure built
- Elevator
- Heating Fuel
- Kitchen Appliances
- Square footage of unit
- Rooms: number and type
- Persons per room (crowding).
- Combines household and structure.
- Requires survey.

## Housing Costs*

- The 2001 median monthly housing cost was $658
- For new construction, it was  $956
- In units with severe physical problems,  $573
- About 1 household in 4 spent over $1000 a month on housing costs
- But a little less than 1 household in 5 spent less than $300

- *rent/mortgage,  taxes,  utilities,  fuels, home insurance

## Mortgages

- 60.0% of Owners had a mortgage (regular or lump-sum home equity loan).
- HE lump-sum is usually a second mortgage.
- 35.5% owned free and clear.
- 2.2% home equity line of credit only.
- Revolving credit.
- 2.2% not reported
- Usually data are _allocated_ (imputed).  Not here.

## Other Costs and Finance

- Mortgage payment
- Property taxes
- Purchase price
- Home Value (self-reported)
- Subsidized housing (e.g., public housing project).
- Reason refinanced mortgage

## Neighborhood Quality and Problems

- 68.7 % of households rate their neighborhood 8 or better, out of 10.
- 6.7% live in gated communities (walls or fences).
- Whether neighborhood has crime, odors, noise, litter, and whether it is bothersome.
- Satisfaction with public transportation, shopping, schools, police.
- Neighborhood buildings abandoned or with bars on windows.

## Examples of Other Measures

- Recent movers
- Reason for Moving
- Tenure of previous residence
- Residential alterations and home repairs
- Added or replaced roof, siding, doors.
- Additions: inside bathrooms, kitchens.
- Remodeling: bathroom and kitchen.
- Journey to Work (commuting)
- Mode, distance, time.

## Commuting: driving alone has become more common

## AHS asks about vehicle ownership

## But this barely opens the door to the wealth of information in the AHS

**But this barely opens the door ****to the wealth ****of information in the AHS**

## The reports have separate tables for:

**Owners**

**Renters**

**African Americans**

**Hispanics**

**The elderly**

## Recent research using AHS data

- Housing Rehabilitation and American Cities
-  Estimates of rehabilitation needs (Millennial Housing Commission Report)
- Worst Case Needs (HUD)
- High rent burdens
- Substandard housing
-  Housing Profile: Out Of Order (Census)
-  Census report on equipment breakdowns, leaks, etc.
- The Value of Owner Occupation in Neighborhoods
- Spillover effects of homeownership on property values of neighbors (Journal of Housing Research)

## The survey is divided into 2 parts:

- National Sample
- Odd-numbered years
- Throughout the country
- (Includes the 6 largest cities -- every other time)
- Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Northern New Jersey, Philadelphia
- About 50,000 homes

- 41 Metro Areas
- Even-numbered years
- on a rotating basis
- about 13 each year
- About 3,000 homes per metro

## Geography for National data products

- United States
- Regions
- Metropolitan statistical areas
- Approx. 100 (microdata)
- All Metros grouped (published)
- Central cities
- Suburbs
- Rural areas
- Places grouped by size
- Not: Individual States

## Geography for Metropolitan data products

- For each of the 47 cities
- 3 sub-areas
- Usually a central city
- 2 largest counties
- Zones (microdata)
- (Census tract groups of 100,000 population)

## Related Data

- CINCH
- Components of inventory Change
- Construction, Demolitions, Conversions
- Based on AHS
- Latest is 1980-1993	(Census)
-                   1985-2001 (HUD)
- Property Owners and Managers Survey (POMS) 1995
- Survey of landlords of AHS rental units
- Finances, management practices, maintenance

## Related Data

- New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey
- Very similar to AHS but more detailed info on rent regulation status
- Large Sample (16,000) every 3 years
- More geographic detail (55 sub-boro areas)
- Reports: Census, NYC, NYU
- Census. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/nychvs.html
- The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/hpd/html/for-researchers/housing-vacancy-surveys.html
- The New York University Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy produces, "The State of NYC's Housing and Neighborhoods." http://www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter/SOC_intro.htm

## Other Census Housing Data

- Residential Finance Survey
- Survey of households and their mortgage lenders
- Every ten years after Census – 2001 PUF released
- Construction Statistics
- Business cycle measurement and local forecasting
- National data on new construction (e.g., permits, starts, prices)
- Some data down to county level
- Characteristics of new construction
- Census of construction (industry data)

## HUD and the Census Bureau	

- Have given a high priority to making the AHS data accessible.

## Data Products

- Published books
- U.S. Census Bureau - Customer Service
- HUD User (www.huduser.org)
- Superintendent of Documents
- Microdata
- Census Bureau’s Ferret System
- HUD’s website in downloadable format
- CD Rom -
- Census Bureau - Customer Service
- HUD User

## At the HUD website you will find:

- www.huduser.org
- 1995 - 2003 AHS files for downloading
- (SAS and ASCII versions)
- Summary statistics for 1997 - 2003
- A codebook for the survey
- Links to the Census Bureau website
- Information for ordering reports

## The Census Bureau website provides

- PDF versions of AHS reports since 1973
- Access to the microdata for extracts
- FERRET system access for
- Creating user-specified tables
- Descriptions of the surveys
- Historical changes
- Definitions of concepts and variables
- Sample design, sizes, and weights
- Census AHS Branch: 301-763-3235