This year, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development won’t fund a biennial Census Bureau survey on the nation’s housing stock, disrupting more than 50 years of data collection and breaking a decades-old federal law.
Data collection for the American Housing Survey was supposed to begin May 1, but now won’t happen until January or later next year, a HUD press release said Monday.
HUD, policymakers, researchers, journalists, and city and state governments use the survey to make sense of the housing market. Postponing the study has prompted concerns that lack of access to the data will erode public understanding of the affordable housing shortage and interrupt efforts to tackle it.
Postponing the one-of-its-kind survey falls in line with a trademark of President Donald Trump’s second term: Massive spending cuts to federal agencies and long-running services that Americans rely on.
Michael Manville is an urban planning professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, and his research focuses on land use and housing. He said postponing the survey was “a bad sign,” especially considering that it’s been published since the 1970s and offers substantial benefits at a low cost.
“If this is foreshadowing a real scaling back or cutting of it, it’s a shame,” he said. “Our statistical information agencies and products in the United States are really the best in the world, or they have been, and reducing or gutting them is just a complete self-inflicted injury on a number of levels. We do use these data for important things, so there are real costs to eliminating them, and the fiscal benefits are so small as to be totally unnoticeable.”
HUD said in the press release that postponing the project until next year is part of a shift from biennial to monthly data collection for the survey due to increased field costs and declining response rates.
However, the Census Bureau had previously planned to begin collecting data every month of every year starting in May this year, according to the agency’s website.
HUD and the Census Bureau didn’t respond to interview requests or answer how collecting data every month of every year instead of five months every two years would save them money. If more frequent data collection really is a cost-saving measure, they also wouldn’t answer why they’re not starting the monthly collection this year.
The Census Bureau is undoubtedly hampered by the double whammy of federal workforce cuts and a hiring freeze in place until July 15, preventing the agency from hiring field representatives to conduct the survey. HUD and the Census Bureau didn’t answer if the hiring freeze caused the agencies to postpone the project.
The Census Bureau also has announced it’s postponing data collection for the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey, the next-generation version of the Household Pulse Survey, which estimated how many Americans couldn’t afford rent and utilities.
Federal law requires HUD to conduct the American Housing Survey every two years
A 1983 federal housing law requires HUD to collect data featured in the American Housing Survey, according to the Census Bureau. The law says HUD must conduct a survey on economic and housing market conditions on the local, national and regional level at least every other year.
HUD didn’t answer how the agency can legally discontinue data collection for the American Housing Survey. Press secretaries for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), president pro tempore for the Senate, didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on HUD disrupting the survey in violation of federal law and how not having the data may affect federal allocations for housing programs.
[ Read more: Homelessness is affecting more older adults as rents eclipse fixed incomes ]
HUD uses American Housing Survey data to allocate funding, determine eligibility for housing assistance, develop programs for certain groups, like low-income people or older adults, and make housing programs more efficient, according to the Census Bureau.
The data also is central to HUD’s biennial report to Congress on substandard housing and other crucial housing needs. Congress first directed HUD to provide the report in 1991, and the agency has consistently published it for more than 30 years, with its most recent version released in 2023. HUD wouldn’t answer if the agency will stop publishing the report due to the lack of relevant data.
Monday’s announcement falls in line with a decades-long history of challenges funding the survey.
Before HUD launched the first American Housing Survey in 1973, most Census Bureau data on housing was from censuses conducted every 10 years, a survey on vacant units and one-off surveys. HUD staff first had the idea for a consistent, longitudinal housing survey that would study the same housing units over time and how they change in the 1960s, according to the Census Bureau, but Congress wouldn’t fund it.
In 1970, Congress gave HUD the ability to conduct research, leading to funding for the agency’s Office of Policy Development and Research and the American Housing Survey.
From 1973 to 1981, HUD funded the survey every year. After that, President Ronald Reagan’s administration targeted HUD with desolating budget cuts, causing the agency’s annual budget to drop about 60% from 1981 to 1989, records show. The cuts forced HUD to fund the American Housing Survey every other year, and since then, the agency hasn’t returned to an annual version of the study.
How researchers, policy analysts and some cities use the American Housing Survey
The survey digs into changes to the size of the nation’s housing stock, costs and how many units have severe structural problems, including issues with plumbing, electricity and heat.
Lawmakers use the data to identify housing needs and develop policies in response.
“These statistics inform decisions that affect the housing opportunities for people of all income levels, ages, and racial and ethnic groups,” the Census Bureau website says.
The housing survey focuses on metro areas, states and the nation, compared to other bureau datasets that provide detailed information for cities, zip codes or Census tracts, which cover areas with populations of about 1,000 to 8,000 people.
Manville said most urban planners don’t use the American Housing Survey, opting instead for more detailed Census sources, like the American Community Survey, which provides city-level and more granular data. But the survey is a valuable resource for researchers and other people interested in the nation’s housing stock, he said.
“It allows us to see what kind of housing Americans are living in now and how that has changed over time, and because of that, we can also make some estimations about how long people stay in their housing, who moves in and out of housing, etc.,” Manville said. “It asks a lot of questions … that the census doesn’t that can be very valuable.”
Anthony Flores, research director for the Oklahoma Policy Institute, said the nonprofit uses the survey to determine which communities in the state have housing shortages, high costs or poor conditions.
“Just knowing the amount of housing is often not enough information,” he said. “You really want to know how much quality housing that we actually have if you want to assess what the shortage of housing in Oklahoma is. You don’t want to count housing that is in poor or dilapidated condition that requires extensive repairs or renovations in order to be habitable.”
Some cities use data from the American Housing Survey together with the American Community Survey to deploy local programs to improve access to safe, affordable housing.
Ten years ago, for instance, New Orleans used data from the surveys to determine which neighborhoods were least likely to have smoke alarms and most at risk of fire fatalities. The New Orleans Fire Department then canvassed the neighborhoods with door-to-door outreach to provide free smoke detectors.
Michael Wallace, legislative director for housing, community and economic development at the National League of Cities, said the American Housing Survey saves local governments the costs to conduct the study themselves, something many can’t afford to do. And data from the Census’ housing survey and the broader American Community Survey help communities understand housing needs for low-income people and develop zoning and building codes to encourage housing developers to fill the gaps.
“Without the Census Bureau, generally,” Wallace said, “the possibility is folks on the margins would remain more hidden or fall through the cracks because there’s no one collecting and updating the data to show what direction our policies are moving us in.”
Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting on Bluesky or by joining our newsletter.
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