26 Apr
2011
26 Apr
'11
10:25 p.m.
Thanks, Pete, for mentioning the under
construction issue. That's definitely also a
concern. They used to call it something like
"sheltered from the elements," meaning that the
roof was up and the windows were in.
I also agree that there are big problems with the
postal vacancy survey. I've never used those data
because I don't trust them, plus they were
delivered at the zip code level which is really
too large to be of any use in a multi-zip code city.
In past censuses, when the bureau claimed to
provide "characteristics of vacancies" I never
trusted those data either, again because
collecting that information is not the decennial
census' primary missing. In turn, this means that
"vacant for sale" and "vacant for rent" are shaky
concepts. Add to that the more modern problem of
condos which are sometimes occupied by their
owners and sometimes on the vacation rental
market...! Impossible to classify.
Patty Becker
At 06:28 PM 4/26/2011, you wrote:
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="_000_C803D69C9CCBC74D8A3625CC9D78D809A228E24949EXCHMB1mcloca_"
Im going to respectfully disagree re: HUD
Users USPS Occupancy/Vacancy rates.
Those occupancy/vacancy rates from HUD User are really wacky.
It was a great idea to leverage the postal
service but its not the mail-carriers
primary mission or duty, so theres very uneven
and inconsistent record-keeping (lots of status
undetermined records). And where status is
determined I think the carriers record-keeping
may be biased toward false positives
(erroneously high occupancy rates)
perhaps
based on the simple fact that junk mail never stops coming?
________________________
Todd Graham
Principal Forecaster and Project Manager
Metropolitan Council
390 Robert Street North
Saint Paul, MN 55101
ph: 651/602-1322
email: <mailto:todd.graham@metc.state.mn.us>todd.graham@metc.state.mn.us
in: www.linkedin.com/in/toddgraham
web: http://www.metrocouncil.org/data/
________________________
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net
[mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Mara Kaminowitz
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 11:33 AM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: RE: [CTPP] Census Vacant Structure Determination
The HUD/USPS dataset may also be of use. The
program is on hold but data is available up to Sept. 2010.