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AHS 2005 Update

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The file flattener program for the 2005 American House Survey
dataset is now available for download from the HUD USER web
site at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahs.html .
This program is a SAS routine that extracts takes the eight
individual SAS files from the transport dataset and produces a
single SAS file, with one record per housing unit.
Observations on persons, commuting, recent mover groups, and
alterations & repair projects are transformed into numbered
groups of variables in the housing unit record. While this
file structure requires about twice as much disk space as the
individual files, some users find it easier to use.

If you haven't yet downloaded the 2005 public use file, you
may want to wait a couple of days. The file we released at
the end of June contains some errors in the alterations and
repairs module (homimp). Records for certain kinds of jobs
related to new carpeting are missing, and most of the
variables for another job code have missing values. We
already have a corrected dataset, and it will be put onto
HUD USER as soon as we can get it there.

I apologize for the extra work this may cost you, and I thank
Amal Bendimerad of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at
Harvard University for bringing this problem to my attention.
Note that the file flattener program does not need to be changed to accomodate this updated dataset.

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