The Shimberg Center is very pleased to welcome Dr. Sherry Ahrentzen as the Center's new Research Professor. Dr. Ahrentzen comes to us from Arizona State University, where she was Associate Director for Research of the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family. Prior to that, she was a Professor of Architecture at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research focuses on new forms of housing and healthy, sustainable communities to better accommodate the social and economic diversity of U.S. households and families. Dr. Ahrentzen received her Ph.D. in Social Ecology from University of California, Irvine.

The Center also welcomes Dr. Abdulnaser Arafat as assistant scientist. Dr. Arafat's research focuses on the coordination of land use and transportation, with special emphasis on the allocation of suitable land for affordable housing. His research and modeling work is based on performing disaggregated and fine spatial resolution analysis using geographic information systems (GIS) and computer programming. Dr. Arafat received his Ph.D. in Design, Construction and Planning from the University of Florida in the summer of 2011.

Check our new publication, The Lost Properties Inventory: Taking Stock of Florida's Formerly Subsidized Rental Housing. This fact sheet describes Florida's inventory of more than 450 previously subsidized housing developments tha t were converted to market rate rentals, converted to condominiums, abandoned, or demolished between 1993 and 2010.

We've rolled out our annual updates to our data sites, including our Profiles, Comparisons, Assisted Housing Inventory, Construction and Sales, Household Demographic Data, and Population Projections datasets.

The Shimberg Center has released the State of Florida's Housing 2010. This report describes changes in housing sales volume and prices over the past decade for Florida counties and metro areas, with a special focus on the slowing home sales market.