ABSTRACT
This chapter provides sometimes relevant data, but no coherent analysis which would lead to identification of groups of households as being in housing need. The initial impetus for needs surveys lay in rural housing conditions, where gentrification of villages meant that there was no housing left which was affordable to local people. Affordability on its own is therefore a poor guide to anything which could be regarded as ‘housing need’. Such surveys provided totals for such indices as the numbers of concealed households desiring housing but unable to afford it, but no view of the housing needs of existing and concealed households as a whole. ‘The issue about aspirations is a difficult one which arises in every housing needs survey. Although many surveys are labelled as being of ‘housing needs’, they are generally flawed by the use of partial and often implied definitions, and their assessments are largely without value as measurements of housing need.
