AHS Digest

Here are the AHS Digest messages:


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From: "Vandenbroucke, David A" <David.A.Vandenbroucke@hud.gov> on 7/17/2007 7:56:14 AM
Subject: AHS 2007 Preview on the Web

The 2007 American Housing Survey is still in the field, and you won't
see the data until this time next year, but we do have a preview of the
survey on the HUD USER web site, at
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html . Here is what you
can find on that page:

* The 2007 "items booklet." This is the document that we send to the
Office of Management and Budget as part of the survey clearance process.
It lists all of the questions and responses in the survey instrument.
It's the closest we come to a human-readable paper questionnaire these
days.

* The Spanish translation of the items booklet. Although there is no
Spanish-language survey instrument for the AHS, the Census Bureau
distributed this translation of the items booklet to its field
representatives, as a guide for conducting interviews in Spanish.

* The 2007 instrument software. This is a working copy of the 2007 AHS
training instrument that you can download and run on your Microsoft
Windows computer. You can use it to walk through an AHS interview,
screen by screen, seeing just what the field representative would see.
It saves no data. This software is offered as-is, with no support
provided by the Census Bureau or the software publisher, and before you
can download it you must agree not to use it to collect data.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-402-5890


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From: "Vandenbroucke, David A" <David.A.Vandenbroucke@hud.gov> on 7/18/2007 2:10:32 PM
Subject: AHS: 32 Years of Housing Data

A new report, "32 Years of Housing Data," is available for download from
the HUD USER web site, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html
. You can find the report in the "AHS Based Analyses" section of that
page.

This report uses the national American Housing Surveys from 1973 through
2005 to take a long view of how the American housing stock has changed
over the past three decades. Aimed at a general audience, it is filled
with color graphs and tables that demonstrate the changing
characteristics of the housing units in which we live. This document
will make a useful supplement for anyone teaching a class in urban
studies, housing, or similar subjects. Nonprofit, trade, and advocacy
groups may want to keep it on hand to show their stakeholders just how
much things have changed and the directions of current trends.

The appendix tables will also be useful to data analysts. Have you ever
found yourself going through volume after volume of the AHS reports,
just to pull out one or two numbers from each in order to construct a
time series? The appendices save you the trouble. While they certainly
don't contain every statistic in the AHS reports, the main housing
indicators are all organized by year, ready to be copied from the PDF
and pasted into your spreadsheet.

This report was written by Frederick J. Eggers and Alexander Thackeray
of Econometrica, Inc., under contract with HUD.

The table of contents is listed below.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-402-5890

Introduction
The American Housing Survey
Size, Location, and Status of the Housing Stock
Structural Characteristics of Units
Quality of the Housing Stock
Housing Costs
Home Values and Mortgage Financing
Neighborhood Conditions
Commuting Patterns
Characteristics of Households and Householders
Future Trends in Housing
Appendix: Supplemental Tables


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