Attachment 3_2025 AHS Metropolitan Selection Process

2025 AHS Metropolitan Selection Process Note

The 2025 AHS will produce estimates of the characteristics of housing units and their occupants for 20 metropolitan areas. The 20 metropolitan areas include the 19 largest by population size, and Charlotte, the 23^rd largest. In 2025, the AHS is shifting to a continuous data collection method and an integrated sample that will produce national, selected state, and selected metropolitan area estimates. The integrated sample reduces field costs, allows for a larger sample size, and will produce annual and two-year estimates of the characteristics of housing units and their occupants. However, the AHS will no longer have separate oversamples of metropolitan areas or rotating metropolitan areas. Instead, metropolitan areas are selected, so that the single AHS sample produces estimates for different geographies. This shift reduces the overall number of metropolitan areas from a planned 35 from 2015-2023 to 20 in 2025, and increases the importance of field considerations, sampling strategies, and metropolitan size on the selection process. While the 2015-2023 AHS included metropolitan areas well outside of the top 20 in population, the 2025 AHS has less flexibility, and will primarily include the largest metropolitan areas. Charlotte, the 23^rd largest metropolitan area replaced San Diego, the 20^th for several reasons: (1) Charlotte was not included in the 2015 Panel, but is the largest metropolitan area in North Carolina/South Carolina with a 20 percent growth in population from 2010 to 2020, (2) Raleigh was included in the 2015 panel, but did not have a large enough sample size to be included in 2025, and (3) California has three other metropolitan areas represented in the 2025 AHS, and multiple simulations performed by the Census Bureau indicated swapping San Diego for Charlotte improved the quality of national estimates.

Full lists of the metropolitan areas for which the 2025 AHS will produce estimates are:

New York–Newark–Jersey City, NY-NJ MSA

Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim, CA MSA

Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL-IN MSA

Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA

Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands, TX MSA

Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA

Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA

Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell, GA MSA

Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach, FL MSA

Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler, AZ MSA

Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA-NH MSA

Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario, CA MSA

San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont, CA MSA

Detroit–Warren–Dearborn, MI MSA

Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA MSA

Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI MSA

Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, FL MSA

Denver–Aurora–Centennial, CO MSA

Baltimore–Columbia–Towson, MD MSA

Charlotte–Concord–Gastonia, NC-SC MSA