RE: Time is Running Out to Make Your Voice Heard - 16

Aside from adding information about students (which seams like a good idea), during this re-sampling venture, more focus should be given to expanding the geographical coverage of the American Housing Survey. Each state should have at least information about its largest metropolitan area. This additional coverage will have numerous benefits such as augmenting the strength of time-series panel studies often used to evaluate public policy outcomes and increasing the accuracy of nationwide statistics.

Data on home-equity for the past few years, for example, has likely been skewed negatively since the survey does not cover Nevada, Maine or Hawaii - states amongst the top ten nationwide with the worst negative equity levels. Furthermore, California holds an overwhelming influence on statistics about the western region. CA has eight metro areas surveyed, while the other western states have either one or no metro areas surveyed. A more comprehensive coverage can help mitigate if not solve those issues.

Will it be possible to expand the geographical coverage?

Luis Arturo Lopez
Data Analyst
Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies
Lee Business School
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89154
Cell phone: (702) 466-4863
Office phone: (702) 895-3223
*My office number is temporarily out of service.

I have not been following all the emails, but when I saw this one I thought I would respond.

“Dormitories and such are group quarters, and thus out of scope for the AHS. Off-campus apartments are housing units and would be in scope. We do have a category of occupancy called “usual residence elsewhere,” which would include students living in apartments who did not consider the unit to be their permanent residence. However, we don’t ask specifically if occupants are students. Do you think that this would be useful to ask?”

Having data on where college students reside would be an excellent addition. A lot of neighborhood and community planning goes on around off-campus housing that could benefit from this data. This data would also be of use to college campus planners. One question that always arises is the issue of income (poverty) and the ability to distinguish between housing units comprised entirely (or primarily) of students and other types of units (families, individuals, groups of non-students). Being able to distinguish these types of units would be helpful in understanding neighborhood poverty concentration as well as student concentration in neighborhoods. Other information, such as rent levels and unit turnover that distinguishes student housing from other types would also be of interest.

Rosalind Kotz
kotzr@nycap.rr.com
518-631-9401