June 27, 2025

New partnership underscores HPD’s commitment to high-quality data collection, privacy protection, and fairness.

For years, the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey has informed the work of the City of New York and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development: to ensure that each and every New Yorker has a safe, affordable place to call home. Today, as the formal launch of the 2026 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) approaches, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is announcing a historic new partnership between the Department and the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR) to conduct the 2026 NYCHVS.

The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, conducted approximately every three years, is the longest-running housing survey in our Nation’s history and represents New York City’s entire housing stock and the population of people who live within it. Together, ISR and HPD will implement this critical housing survey to produce accurate data, shape better-informed policy, and advance fairer, more equitable outcomes for all New Yorkers. ISR is one of the world’s oldest and most respected academic survey research organizations. This partnership between HPD and ISR, the sponsor and steward of some of the longest-running and most widely used surveys in America, underscores HPD’s commitment to ensuring the NYCHVS’s continued impact, accuracy, and usefulness for generations to come.

ISR’s Survey Research Operations (SRO) unit will lead the data collection for the 2026 NYCHVS, and ISR’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will house the City’s housing microdata data dating back to 1978 through 2023, allowing researchers, advocates, journalists, and New Yorkers to freely access the data. ICPSR will also host all new NYCHVS data moving forward.

The NYCHVS has served as the cornerstone of the City’s rent regulation system, as well as the primary source of housing data on New York City, and it provides critical data that informs our housing policies and programs. While this announcement marks a shift from HPD’s partnership with the Census, which dates back to the 1960s, the NYCHVS’ commitment to high-quality, impactful, and accurate data and analysis remains the same. Beginning in 2020, the NYCHVS began taking steps to modernize and expand the data collected: from a shift to a computer-administered survey to a dramatic expansion of the amount of data gathered and the implementation of an advance translation of the survey into seven languages. This partnership with the University of Michigan will ensure HPD can continue to make decisions rooted in reliable data— that not only address today’s housing challenges but help us build a more just and inclusive future for all New Yorkers.

“For over six decades, the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey has played a critical role in helping shape HPD’s understanding of the city’s housing stock and informing policy making from poverty reduction to public health. This is an essential tool in helping us provide safe, affordable housing for all New Yorkers,” said Acting HPD Commissioner Ahmed Tigani. “The importance of today’s announcement that HPD will partner with the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research should not be understated. ISR is one of the premier centers for data collection and analysis in the world, and our collaboration with them will allow us to more effectively manage and access data, and by extension, serve New Yorkers and all of their housing needs for generations to come. As the start of the 2026 NYCHVS approaches, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in our work to build and preserve affordable housing across the five boroughs. Our partnership will strengthen these efforts and help us deliver a fairer, more equitable City for all.”

“We are very excited about this new partnership with the City of New York. We look forward to our collaboration with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to uphold the highest quality and best practices for innovative research to benefit the New York City community,” said Pamela Davis-Kean, Director of the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. 

Institute for Social Research’s Survey Research Operations Unit and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research Background

The NYCHVS will draw on the expertise of multiple ISR research centers, including Survey Research Operations Unit (SRO) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). SRO is an international leader in interdisciplinary social science research involving the collection and analysis of data, especially data from scientific sample surveys. The SRO’s contributions to rigorous scientific studies include data collection for the final evaluation for the Moving to Opportunity Demonstration, the seminal study on the impact of moving to low poverty neighborhoods that continues to influence national and local housing policy to this day. Additionally, ICPSR, which manages the world’s largest archive of digital social science data, will make decades of NYCHVS data more accessible than ever. Researchers, advocates, journalists, and New Yorkers will be able to freely access housing data dating back to 1978 in more accessible environment. This new partnership will help the City of New York better understand how housing, neighborhoods, communities, and populations have evolved over time—and what still needs to change. 

NYC Housing & Vacancy Survey Background 

The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) is the longest-running housing survey in the United States, established to provide objective, data-based reporting into the supply and condition of housing and the continued need for the regulation of rents and evictions, so that the City can make educated policy decisions. Conducted about every three years since 1965, the survey fulfills the City’s obligations under the Local Emergency Housing Rent Control Act (LEHRCA) of 1962.

The NYCHVS creates a comprehensive profile of the city’s housing stock, neighborhoods, population, and vacancy rate providing a snapshot of New Yorkers’ experience at the time in which it is conducted. Insights gleaned from the survey inform policy both locally and nationally and help guide efforts to build a more equitable city.  It is the only survey that captures in-depth information on tenants living in rent-stabilized and rent-controlled housing and allows comparisons across different housing types citywide. The survey collects data far beyond housing, capturing information on demographic change, migration, health, family formation, and more.

The most recent findings were announced in February 2024 based on nearly 10,000 interviews conducted in January through mid-June 2023. The NYCHVS is a citywide survey based on a statistical sample of residential units, carefully weighted to reflect the full diversity of New York City’s housing and population. The data are gathered through in-person interviews with residents (or knowledgeable representatives if the unit is vacant), observed by trained field interviewers and language interpreters. The interview collects information about the people who live there (e.g., income and employment, public assistance, and demographics) as well as the unit, building, and neighborhood (e.g., costs and quality of the housing unit, perceived safety).  These data are combined with data from a variety of other sources, such as rent registration data and information from NYC Finance, to provide the most comprehensive and accurate information possible.

The survey serves as an invaluable resource for understanding the city's evolution by covering housing types, demographic changes, and various aspects of residents' lives, offering a holistic view of New York City's development over the past six decades.