Re: Not always joking, it seems

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> <rkshullat@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> Then it's junk data, since it implies that if you sleep on the
>>> couch at a friend's house, you're a homeowner.
> 
>> No, because they're not counting you at all, they're counting
>> housing units.  Doesn't matter if it's you alone, five students, or
>> four entire "families".  If the owner is one of the people living
>> there, then it's owner occupied.  If the owner is not living there,
>> then it's not.  Spending a night over at a friend's house is not
>> living there any more than spending a night at a hotel counts as
>> moving, so even if you happen to be the owner of the friend's house
>> you don't make it "owner-occupied" by visiting for a night.
> 
> I was thinking of people who crash with friends semi-permanently,
> not just for a few days.
> 
> To take an extreme example, if every house was occupied by its owner
> and by ten unrelated adults, and there were no rented houses or
> apartments, it would look as if everyone was a homeowner, when
> actually fewer than ten percent were.

As I said, they're not counting homeowners, they're counting homes. In
your example, the stats still wouldn't show that everyone is a homewoner,
they would show (correctly) that every home is occupied by its owner.
That's an entirely different thing. If the stats are taken as correct
(which may be arguable) then it's not a huge issue at the present. The
4th quarter 2007 stats(1) show 110,878K occupied housing units with
75,164K being owner occupied, or 67.8%. A population of roughly 300M
implies an average of 2.7 people per housing unit, which doesn't sound
like there's too much of an issue. In your example, there would be fewer
housing units, all owner occupied, with a much higher average occupancy.
Trying to come up with a number that allowed for all of the different
possible arrangements of owners, renters, guests, family groups,
roommates, coops, etc. would not only be a real headache I suspect it
would be so open to bias as to be nearly useless.

	Robert

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/qtr407/q407press.pdf
-- 
Robert K. Shull                           Email: rkshull at rosettacon dot
com