AHS updates

Dear AHS User Community,

My staff and I would like to provide you with a few AHS updates:

2015 AHS Metropolitan Area Oversamples
On Tuesday, HUD will publish a Federal Register Notice seeking public comment on which metropolitan areas to oversample in the 2015 AHS. As many of you know, the 2011 AHS and 2013 AHS included our regular longitudinal national sample as well as a large number of metropolitan area oversamples (29 and 25, respectively). The budget outlook for the 2015 AHS is promising, and HUD expects to conduct between 15 and 30 metropolitan area oversamples. It is important to HUD that the AHS user community is engaged in the metropolitan area oversample decisions. We are especially interested in metropolitan areas that are important from a housing program or housing policy perspective. We are willing to entertain requests to include a metropolitan area in both the 2015 AHS and the 2017 AHS. We are also willing to consider requests for samples focused on particular population cohorts when it is feasible. Please take a moment to read the notice and submit your comments. As always, feel free to call me if you’d like to discuss further (202-402-5538).

2015 AHS Redesign Update
HUD and Census are nearly finished with the redesign of the AHS. Most of the core modules will remain in the survey with minor updates. Within the next few weeks, we’ll provide the AHS user community with a list of core module changes. We still have a few important decisions to make regarding sample sizes, metropolitan area oversamples, rotating topical modules, and utility data collection strategy. As we make these decisions, we will share them with you via the list serve and in whitepapers.

2013 AHS Beta PUF
Within the next few weeks, HUD and Census will begin quality control review of the beta version of the 2013 AHS microdata. HUD’s past practice has been to conduct 3-4 rounds of quality control before we publish the first official PUF. However, HUD recognizes the user community’s desire to utilize the data as soon as possible. If you would like to receive the beta version of the PUF microdata, please send me an email (shawn.j.bucholtz@hud.gov) and I will provide further details.

Shawn Bucholtz
Director, Housing and Demographic Analysis
Office of Policy Development and Research
Department of Housing and Urban Development
shawn.j.bucholtz@hud.gov
202-402-5538