Shelter — rent
Observed market rent: Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI) US national, 2015-01+, spliced to Census Housing Vacancy Survey median asking rent pre-2015. No CPI (market rent, not OER).
Sources
Precedence ladder for shelter — rent. Lower precedence wins where multiple sources cover the same period. The engine walks the ladder per period with chain-link rescale at source transitions.
| Precedence | Source | Series ID | Cadence | Geography |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | zillow_zori Zillow ZORI US-national smoothed monthly |
zillow_zori_us_national_smoothed | — | national |
| 1 | census_hvs Census HVS Table 11A median asking rent quarterly broadcast to monthly; pre-ZORI window |
census_hvs_median_asking_rent_us | — | national |
Weight across archetypes
How shelter — rent is weighted in each of the 10 published archetypes. Sorted by weight, highest first. National Average is the headline citation surface.
| Archetype | Weight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Renter | 25.4946% | View archetype → |
| Income — Lowest Quintile | 12.4186% | View archetype → |
| Income — Second Quintile | 10.9724% | View archetype → |
| Income — Middle Quintile | 9.9503% | View archetype → |
| Working Parent | 8.3768% | View archetype → |
| National Average | 7.6156% | View archetype → |
| Income — Fourth Quintile | 6.6740% | View archetype → |
| Retiree | 6.3031% | View archetype → |
| Income — Highest Quintile | 3.1943% | View archetype → |
| Homeowner | 0.1638% | View archetype → |
Substitution history
Substitution log entries that touched this stratum. Each entry
bumps the basket version and is reproducible from observations
tagged with their basket_version.
2026-05-29 — Zero-CPI recomposition, chain-linked headline, CPI ingester removed
Version: v1.1.4 → v2.0.0
What changed. Retired BLS CPI from the index entirely and removed its last infrastructure. (1) Five CPI/proxy-dependent strata EXITED and weights renormalized over the surviving 15: household_goods, personal_care, alcohol (pure CPI primaries), food_away (single-chain Big Mac proxy, rejected as non-representative), and tobacco (CPI Tobacco was its only 2020+ path). (2) The last CPI bridge — CUUR0000SEMF01 (Rx CPI) — removed from healthcare_oop, now NADAC (5 generic drugs) + CMS PFS (2 CPT codes) only. (3) shelter_rent moved to Zillow ZORI (2015+) spliced to Census HVS median asking rent (≤2014), and the state healthcare_premium chain-link to BLS CPI SEME was dropped — these SUPERSEDE the v1.1.2 'chain-link to BLS CPI SEME for 2025+' and v1.1.3 'leaving BLS CPI Rent of Primary Residence as sole source' entries below, which describe the now-replaced v1.1.x state. (4) Headline switched to a drift-free fixed-base-within-spans construction, chain-linked only at composition boundaries, so late-starters splice in at entry with no level jump and the index spans the full window. (5) The dormant bls_cpi ingester, its CLI/freshness/reingest wiring, its fixture, and 7,174 inert CUUR rows were deleted from price_observations (local + prod).
Why. The load-bearing commitment is that the index contains NO BLS CPI anywhere — not a primary, not a bridge, not a fallback — because claiming to improve on CPI while still consuming CPI is incoherent. These changes realize it fully: non-CPI share = 100%.
Effect on headline. Published window 2000-01 → 2025-12 (312 months, up from a truncated 2010-2023); long-run decay 3.440%/yr; Dollar Half-Life 20.5 yr; CPI series in index 0; strata count 20 → 15. Price rows remain tagged basket_version=1.0.10 (a weighting + engine-construction change, not a re-ingest); exited strata's rows stay in the store at weight 0 so prior versions remain reconstructable.
2026-05-27 — HUD FMR removed from engine path
Version: v1.1.2 → v1.1.3
What changed. Removed HUD Fair Market Rents ingester, series, fixture, tests, and schedule entries; deleted 46,833 HUD FMR rows from price_observations; shelter_rent precedence-1 fallback dropped, leaving BLS CPI Rent of Primary Residence as sole source.
Why. HUD FMR is administrative data (40th-percentile ceiling for Section 8 vouchers, derived from 5-year-smoothed ACS gross-rent data) measuring assistance-payment standards rather than market rent; never fired as a fallback under existing BLS coverage; retention implied a methodology promise the engine was not honoring.
Effect on headline. ~0.001 pp (rounding noise).
Methodology
See the basket page for all 20 strata and the per-stratum source map. The methodology page covers the load-bearing pillars including the rules around source-precedence ladders, chain-link splicing at source transitions, and the no-fabricated-data invariant.