2002
Abstract:
Housing needs is a concept of central importance to state and local planning in the United
States (Landis and LeGates 2000). Roughly characterized as the number and type of housing
units required to accommodate a population at a given standard of housing occupancy, the
formulation of a quantified estimate of housing needs requires many assumptions that intertwine
normative and empirical judgments.
The overall aim of this article is to propose a needed theoretical framework and more
rigorous methods for demographic component of housing needs estimates. Grounding this in the
recent California experience helps to illustrate concepts with a concrete example. As
demographic change continues to spread across the country, growing numbers of regions and
cities can benefit from this study of the California experience.
The article begins with a broad overview of the definition of housing needs, and then
focuses on the central role of population growth and change in determining future construction
needs. A pivotal issue is the instability over time of the empirical relationship between
population and housing, as shown by comparison of household formation and homeownership
rates from 1960 to 2000. A further issue is the sharp differences registered between different age
groups, races, ethnicities, and nativity groups. Although disaggregation permits projections to
capitalize on observed differences between groups, it also highlights the existence of inequities
and the policy goal of reducing them.
