ACS 2006 Standard Quality Rent Calculation for

The following information provides details on how the 2006 ACS Standard Quality 50th Percentile Rent of was developed for using the publically releasable distributions from the 2006 ACS.

User Note

The standard quality rents that HUD uses in generating FMRs are derived from rent distributions that are prohibited from public release under Title XIII to protect the confidentiality of respondents. The distributions used in this demonstration are rounded versions of the actual, protected data.

The rounding scheme is as follows:

0, count = 0
1 to 7, count = 4
all other counts are rounded to the nearest 5 (e.g., 10, 15, 20, 25, etc.)

CALCULATIONS USING THE ROUNDED DATA MAY NOT PRODUCE THE SAME RESULT AS CALCULATIONS USING THE PROTECTED DATA. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HUD'S ACTUAL RESULTS AND THOSE DEMONSTRATED HERE IS INVERSELY RELATED TO THE SIZE OF THE AREA. THAT IS, THE LARGER THE AREA, THE CLOSER THE CALCULATION BASED ON THE ROUNDED DATA IS LIKELY TO BE TO THE CENSUS BASE RENT COMPUTED FROM THE PROTECTED DATA.

Standard Quality Rents

HUD uses rents for standard quality units to generate update factors. "Standard Quality" units and rents are determined by limiting the full ACS sample by including only responses meeting the following criteria:

a. Occupied rental units paying cash rent
b. Specified renter ? on 10 acres or less
c. with full plumbing
d. with full kitchen
e. built before 1999
f. meals not included in rent

The 2006 ACS did not included a question that could be used to filter public or assisted housing from the rental distributions, however HUD is required to ensure that FMRs exclude non-market rental housing in their computation. Therefore, HUD excludes all units falling below a specified rent level determined from public housing rents in HUD's program databases as likely to be either assisted housing or otherwise at a below-market rent (perhaps due to quality problems not otherwise captured by the survey questions).

The "public housing" rent cut-off for in 2006 is .

Note: For a discussion of the derivation of the cut-off rent, please review the following document: Public Housing Adjustments for FMRs

A Microsoft Excel file containing the unsummarized versions of the publicly releasable standard quality 2-bedroom rent distributions for is available here.

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50th Percentile 2006 ACS Standard Quality Rent -

The following table and calculations demonstrate how the 50th percentile 2006 ACS standard quality rent is determined for using the public distribution of standard quality rents.

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Portion of Standard Quality Rent Distribution	Gross Rent Dollar Range	Number of Units	Percent of Eligible Distribution	Cumulative Percent
Units below interval containing public housing rent level of	$0 to	0	Not in Distribution	Not in Distribution
Units in interval containing public housing rent level of	to	0.00	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: / (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 400] ###.0%	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: / (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 401] ###.0%
Units below interval containing 50th percentile standard quality rent of $50	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: (null) + 1 [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 406] $#,### to $1	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: (null) - 0 [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 407] ###,###,###	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: (null) - 0 [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 408] ###.0%	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: (null) / (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 409] ###.0%
Units in interval containing 50th percentile standard quality rent of $50	$0 to $99	0	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: / (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 414] ###.0%	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: + (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 415] ###.0%
Units above interval containing 50th percentile standard quality rent of $50	$100 or more		ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: (null) / (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 422] ###.0%	ODBscript Error: Non-numeric expression: + (null) [Error in file acs_dist_calc.odn line 423] ###.0%
Total Units Above Public Housing Rent in Standard Quality Rent Distribution

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The Public Housing Rent level of falls on the low end of a rent distribution cell, so all units in this cell are counted as standard quality units having rents above the Public Housing rent level.

In , the 50th percentile standard quality rent falls within an empty distribution cell so the 50th percentile standard quality rent is computed as the average of the lower limit of the empty cell ($0) and the lower limit of the next cell containing data ($100) rounded to the nearest dollar. That is:

50th percentile standard quality rent = ($0 + $100 / 2 = $50.

The difference between the actual 2006 ACS Standard Quality Rent of and the demonstration 2006 ACS Standard Quality Rent of $50 computed here is due to the effects of rounding on the public distribution as described above.

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