Executive Summary

The American Community Survey (ACS) is one of three program components required to achieve the 2010 Census re-engineering strategy goals. Data collected over the decade by the ACS will take the place of the once-a-decade collection and estimation of detailed socio-economic and housing characteristics collected on a sample basis as part of each census, and produce annual and multi-year estimates of these same characteristics. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) was conducted in conjunction with Census 2000 using the ACS methods and systems to demonstrate the operational feasibility of conducting the ACS on a national scale at the same time that the Census Bureau was conducting the decennial census. To date, reports have been issued that address questions concerning the procedural and technical performance of the ACS methodologies. This report is one of several exploring the quality that can be expected of ACS estimates. The focus of these assessments is a comparison of the C2SS results with the results from the Census 2000 Sample. The scope of this particular report is a comparison of C2SS estimates of important physical and financial characteristics of the nation’s housing stock with the same estimates derived from the Census 2000 Sample.