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ACS-HUD Data Linkage

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ACS-HUD Data Linkage

    Dataset/ACS-HUD Data Linkage

Background

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau), is pleased to announce the release of the ACS-HUD linked data product. The data are based on the linkage of the 2011 through 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) with HUD administrative records for HUD’s largest housing assistance programs: Multifamily, Public Housing, and Housing Choice Vouchers.

The ACS contains a wealth of information not collected in HUD administrative records, including questions about race, employment status, industry of occupation, veteran status, commuting modes, and availability of highspeed internet. When an important HUD programmatic or policy question emerges that requires new statistical efforts, it is more cost effective to use matched data assets to answer the question than it is to conduct new data collection efforts.

Short Report on Data Linkage

Full Technical Report on Data Linkage

How to Access the Restricted Use Data

To protect the confidentiality of survey respondents, the ACS-HUD linked files are restricted-use files. Interested researchers can submit a proposal to use the data through the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (https://www.census.gov/fsrdc). Please visit the Census Bureau’s restricted use application website: https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/ced/apply-for-access.html to find useful information about how to apply to use the data.

The ACS/HUD Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) Indicator

HUD anticipates that many analysts will want to use the ACS-HUD linked files to produce summary statistics but either cannot get Special Sworn Status due to limited resources or do not want to go through the process of obtaining Special Sworn Status and getting access to a Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) without some assurance that their methodology is feasible. To accommodate those users, HUD has developed a “HUD-assisted unit” categorical indicator that can be merged to the 2015 ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). This product, called the 2015 PUMS/HUD indicator, classifies each ACS PUMS housing unit as one of four values: public housing (PH), voucher (VO), project based Section 8 (MF), or not assisted (None).

***The 2015 PUMS/HUD indicator was not built for producing publication-quality estimates of HUD-assisted units.***