The scale and nature of the housing shortage

It is almost impossible to determine the shortage of housing in the developing world as not only are insufficient data available but also there is little agreement between countries on units of measurement or what constitutes adequacy. Furthermore, the relationship between households and housing is so dynamic that any data are soon out of date. In addition, it takes so long for housing data to be collated that census data from 1990 may not be available before 1996 or 1997. When dealing with people who are actually homeless, UNCHS (1996c) suggests that 100 million people in the world lack any shelter at all and sleep on pavements, in parks or shop doorways, under bridges, in transport terminals, or in night shelters provided for the homeless. Those who have very insecure or temporary accommodation, or are squatters in someone else's home, on land where eviction is threatened, in refugee camps, and in temporary shelters on public space, would number about 1000 million.

However, characteristics that expose housing shortages show that there are very many more people who cannot afford, or obtain through welfare benefits, housing which provides them with the mix of sheltered space and services which any particular society may define as adequate. Documents on housing and urbanisation created with as many resources as are available, particularly the recent Global Report on Human Settlements (UNCHS, 1996c), must rely on such characteristics to infer the scale of the problem. Specific characteristics indicative of housing shortage include crowding (in people per room and space per person), sharing of housing or multi-habitation; widespread squatting (sometimes by households in a wide range of income); and the ability of landlords to raise rent advances or key money, and high rents for even poor quality housing.

UNCHS (Habitat), in collaboration with the World Bank, has attempted to formalise the collection of housing indicator variables through the recently instituted Housing Indicators Programme (UNCHS, 1993; World Bank, n.d.). Forty-four indicators have been identified and have been collected as a pilot study from single cities in 52 countries. The meaning of each indicator variable is defined so that comparability may be achieved.