ABSTRACT
The ‘need’ for housing, as with the ‘need’ for health services, or roads, or recreational facilities, is dependent upon the awareness, recognition and definition of ‘problems’: these in turn are dependent upon the standards of ‘adequacy’ adopted and the factors which are accepted as being relevant to them. All these constantly change: as one ‘problem’ is met, another emerges. The choice of minimum socially acceptable standards is not completely independent of the incomes and prices prevailing in the country concerned, while the same demographic factors that largely determine housing needs also strongly influence the effective demand for dwelling units. Little thought was given to vulnerable groups living in the private sector on the implicit grounds that their problems received fair priority within general policies directed towards meeting housing needs. If local authorities are to have responsibility for the totality of the housing needs of their areas they will be concerned with far more than the provision of council houses.
