ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the overall study to illuminate the distribution of housing deprivations across various demographic groups and to ascertain the overlap of housing and nonhousing problems within individual families. The stress of most low-income housing studies is on the resource aspects of the problem. Low income and the high cost of housing are seen as the primary explanatory variables. To some degree, poverty can only be understood as an intolerable condition of life of which housing deprivations are a most important element. It is the general relationship between housing and poverty. Equally important in their impact on poverty are the immobility of the housing product and institutional constraints, such as zoning and building codes, on the housing market. Most housing programs and many analyses of housing problems are based on extremely inadequate data concerning the quality of the residential inventory. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
