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Census webinar walks users through housing data tools and key national indicators
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Summary
U.S. Census Bureau staff demonstrated how to find and use housing data—from the decennial census and ACS to visualization tools such as data.census.gov and the housing unit change viewer—and answered audience questions about where to start local housing research.
The U.S. Census Bureau hosted a webinar to show how people and organizations can access housing data and the bureau’s mapping and table tools. Crystal Jimmerson, a training specialist with the Census Bureau, opened the session and said the webinar recording and supplemental materials will be posted to the Census Academy site.
Presenters walked through the primary surveys that produce housing statistics and the tools to retrieve them. Ileana Serrano, a data dissemination specialist, outlined core data sources: the decennial census for counts of people and housing units; the American Community Survey (ACS) for annual housing characteristics; the Current Population Survey (CPS), which can include a housing vacancies and homeownership supplement; and the American Housing Survey (AHS), conducted for HUD by the Census Bureau. Serrano said AHS will move toward a continuous collection model tentatively beginning in 2026 and that upcoming AHS content will include home accessibility and climate-insurance topics.
The webinar emphasized tools for locating and comparing data. Jolie Golden demonstrated advanced search on data.census.gov, showing how to filter by year and place and load data profiles. In the live example Golden opened table V25077 to compare median housing values across Austin, Houston and San Antonio and pointed out options to remove margin-of-error displays and to switch between one-year and multi-year tables. Serrano highlighted DP04 and CP04 comparative tables for users seeking multi-year ACS comparisons, and presenters described MDAT and the Census API for users who need microdata or programmatic access.
Presenters also reviewed economic surveys and visualizations that include housing measures: the Building Permit Survey (BPS) for authorizations and construction status, the Survey of Construction (SOC) for starts and completions, the Manufactured Housing Survey (MHS), the Rental Housing Finance Survey, and the Survey of Market Absorption (SOMA). The session included demonstrations of a building-permit visualization and of the housing unit change viewer (a geography-department tool) that can display percent and numeric housing-unit change down to census tract and block-group levels.
The webinar shared recent headline statistics drawn from the housing vacancy and homeownership data: according to the presentation the national rental vacancy rate is 7.1%, the national homeowner vacancy rate is 1.1%, and the national homeownership rate is 65.1%. (Those figures were presented by the Census Bureau subject-matter expert during the session.)
In a short Q&A, an attendee question about where to begin researching local housing prompted Caroline Short, the session’s housing subject-matter expert, to recommend starting with the American Community Survey for general housing characteristics and financial measures and using the AHS table builder when a longer historical or detailed housing unit perspective is required. Short also recommended comparison tables (CP04/DP04) for side-by-side multi-year ACS analysis.
The Census Bureau said it will post the webinar recording, slides and a Q&A transcript on census.gov/academy within the next 30 business days. Presenters offered that Census data dissemination specialists are available for tailored trainings and provided contact information and links in the webinar Q&A.
