New Data Fields for HUD Aggregated USPS Administrative Data on Address Vacancies

Alexander Din
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Office of Policy Development and Research, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. Government.

Since 2005, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has worked in partnership with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to receive administrative data on address vacancies. HUD has made that data available to government entities and nonprofit researchers. Since 2012, HUD has received more than 3,100 requests for access to the data. In the most recent agreement between HUD and USPS, new fields have become available regarding (1) the USPS preferred name and preferred state for a ZIP Code, (2) the count of addresses added to the USPS Address Management System (AMS) during the quarter, and (3) drop counts for entities such as mobile home communities and gated communities where mail is delivered to a single recipient but no data are collected for the addresses using that node. The purpose of acquiring those extra data was to better understand address vacancy and neighborhood change. It is expected that these new data fields will continue to be available for future datasets.