Request: Vacancy Status by Units in Structure for Block-Group or Tract

NHGIS
1

Hello,

I am trying to estimate vacancy rates for large rental buildings (specifically, rental units in buildings with 5+ units). Does the variable “vacancy status by units in structure” or its components exist in a way that can be made public for block-group or tract? I see there is “Tenure by Units in Structure” and “Vacancy Status”, but there is no cross between them.

Alternatively, could this be calculated using the ACS at a higher geography (and then I could apply this ratio to the smaller geography)? For example, if X percent of for rent buildings are “large” in county C, then I could apply X at the block-group / tract level.

Thank you for your time,
Best,
Luke

2

The trade-off for the geographic granularity of the tabular data is a loss of flexibility in the specific tables produced. Unfortunately, I don’t think the cross you are looking for is available. You could create a custom table using the microdata (via IPUMS USA) at the PUMA-level and disaggregate this to lower geographies. However, providing a specific recommendation on how to allocate this to lower geographies is beyond the scope of our team. You might be interested in the methodology of Iterative Proportional Fitting summarized by Hunsinger 2008, and explored in a context more similar to yours by Leyk et al. 2013 and Ruther et al. 2013.