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AHS Schedule Changes

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As you may have heard, we have been revising the American Housing Survey's schedule and scope. This message describes the new plans, which have been finalized.

There are two reasons for the changes. The short-run reason is that the Census Bureau is converting all of its survey instruments to use a new programming language, called Blaise. Blaise is a Windows-based system, and it will replace the MS-DOS based CASES system. Inevitably, the first use of the new instrument (in 2007 for the AHS) will be accompanied by some teething troubles and delay. The long-run reason for the changes is the Federal government's budget stringency, which especially affects discretionary domestic programs. The AHS budget has been reduced from about $20 million per year to about $16 million, and we have no reason to believe that it will be increased in the future.

In order to accommodate these changes, the AHS is concentrating all field work in odd-numbered years. (In former years we did the national survey odd years and the metro surveys in even years). In addition, the number of metropolitan areas surveyed is being reduced from 47 to 21, over a six year cycle (7 per survey year). The "big six" metropolitan areas (Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Northern New Jersey, and Philadelphia), which recently had been surveyed as supplementary samples of the national survey, will once again be independent samples, on the same cycle as the other 15 remaining areas. Our target sample size for the metro surveys is 3000 cases for each of the 21. The national survey sample size will be reduced from 60,000 cases to 55,000.

The Blaise transition will delay the release of the 2007 survey. Our schedule calls for the Census Bureau to send HUD the first quality control version of the public use file (PUF) by the end of April, 2008--three months later than our current practice. While we will certainly try to move the quality control process along, a corresponding three-month delay in the release of the final PUF would mean that it would be available at the end of September, 2008. You should make your plans accordingly. We expect to return to releasing the file in early summer after the 2009 survey.

Two natural questions that you may ask is whether there will be any further cuts in the program, or whether the cuts may be restored in the future. The answer is that we don't know. We have to structure the AHS within the confines of the budget, which comes to us through Congress, HUD, and the Office of Policy Development & Research. Clearly, if the budget is cut further, we will have to respond. If it is increased, we will certainly try to improve the survey. That is about all we can tell you at this point.

The list below shows the metro areas that we intend to survey, by year.

2007
Baltimore
Boston
Houston
Miami
Minneapolis
Tampa
Washington DC

2009
Chicago
Dallas
Los Angeles
New York
Phoenix
Riverside
San Diego

2011
Atlanta
Detroit
Northern NJ
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Seattle
St. Louis

Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-708-1060 ext. 5890