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Analysis of New Housing Owners <br /> to address the question of what • <br /> In addition to the above analyses, the data was used q <br /> proportion of new housing is built by current residents of the school district. This question <br /> arose as a way to test the assumption that most new houses are built by newcomers to the area <br /> who have not been paying taxes to the County to support the school district. Unfortunately, <br /> gathering data on this topic is difficult, and the results are not clear. <br /> The only readily available data were the children's school entry dates and the dates of <br /> issuance of the certificates of occupancy. Each new housing unit in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro <br /> School District with at least one child was examined to determine whether any children from <br /> that household entered the public school system prior to the date the Certificate of Occupancy <br /> was issued. School entry dates were not available for the Orange County School District. <br /> Forty-six percent (46%) of households with children in new housing units had at least <br /> one child enrolled in the public school system prior to the date of issuance of the Certificate of <br /> Occupancy, while fifty-four percent (54%) had no children enrolled before the Certificate was <br /> issued. These numbers might indicate that less than half of new housing units are occupied by • <br /> people who lived in the school district before occupying a new housing unit, while more than <br /> 50% of new housing units are occupied by people who moved to the area. <br /> There are a number of complicating factors, however. The main weakness of this <br /> analysis is that the majority of new housing units had no children in the school system and <br /> therefore were not included. Additionally, there are a number of problems with the data for <br /> households with children. In some cases, families may temporarily live in a nearby apartment <br /> to oversee the construction of their homes and to allow their children to begin school at the <br /> start of a new school year. Alternatively, some families with children who enrolled after the <br /> date of the Certificate of Occupancy may have lived in the area previously with children who <br /> were too young to attend school. Due to these problems, the data is not adequate to answer <br /> the question. <br /> In order to obtain better data, a survey could be conducted of residents of new housing <br /> units asking for their previous address, the date they moved to the current address, and the <br /> length of stay at the previous address. <br /> 18 <br />