Global Housing Indicators: Evidence for Action
Introduction:
Habitat for Humanity International has launched the Global Housing Indicators project because we see a clear need to advocate for better housing policies. It provides a neutral basis on which advocates can engage with local and national governments to embrace policies that work and change those that impede progress. Habitat for Humanity has a bold vision: a world where everyone has a decent place to live. For 35 years house by house, family by family, and community by community Habitat has worked toward that goal using an extensive network of volunteers, partners and funders to build, renovate and repair more than 500,000 homes in partnership with more than 2.5 million people.
What are the Global Housing Indicators?
The Global Housing Indicators collect reliable, objective, comparable information on the policy environment for adequate and affordable housing. They make up a tool to assess the policies and practices under which housing in a country is — or is not — owned, rented, financed, subsidized, serviced, regulated, planned and built. Designed to be fielded in countries worldwide, the GHI provide housing advocates, governments, researchers, nongovernmental organizations, practitioners, think tanks and others with a holistic picture of how housing policies currently function either to increase or to limit housing opportunity, especially for the poor. Notably, advocates for housing often are pressed to make their case for better housing policy.
Why Global Housing Indicators? Don’t we already know?:
The evidence is convincing that housing policies are critical. But the fact is, much of what we know about housing policies around the world is fragmented and piecemeal at best.
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What policies actually are in place and where?
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Whom are they intended to benefit?
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What groups do they actually encourage or discourage?
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How are housing policies implemented?
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Which of them are enforced or ignored, and why?
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These are the types of questions the Global Housing Indicators is designed to address.
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How the Global Housing Indicators came to be:
The GHI arose from a growing recognition among housing practitioners that a standard format was needed for collecting and analyzing housing policies across cities and countries — it has been a long time in the making and is best thought of as an ongoing process, rather than a finished product.
The GHI provide a holistic picture of the housing sector:
The coverage of the Global Housing Indicators GHI assessment tool, at first glance, appears quite extensive — some would say daunting. But unless they are comprehensive, the GHI’s usefulness for advocacy will be limited. Most housing assessments look only at specific aspects of housing policies — the mortgage system or property rights, for example. They do not consider the system as a whole or the connections between components.
The Global Housing Indicators GHI assessment attempts to provide as complete a picture as possible, while presenting the information in a useful, accessible format. Experience fielding the GHI assessment tool in 14 countries shows that, in practice, a small team of specialists can complete the assessment within a month (i.e., 20-25 working days).
The new version of the Global Housing Indicators:
The Global Housing Indicators GHI assessment tool: Revised, improved and peer-reviewed:
Preliminary results for 14 countries that fielded the 2009 version of the GHI are presented in summary form in Appendix 1 of this report. A team of housing policy experts from Habitat for Humanity International, the World Bank Urban Development Department and Inter-American Development Bank met regularly over several months to pore over the assessment material that came in from the field and:
• Evaluate the quality of the data collected with special attention to reviewing the relevancy of certain topics and questions across countries and regions.
• Undertake a line-by-line revision of the GHI assessment tool, including the deletion of some topics and indicators and inclusion of others.
• Make general improvements such as providing better answering options (e.g., alternatives to yes/no, or 1 to 5 scaled responses) and adding texture by capturing certain information for descriptive and background purposes.
• Provide clearer instructions for the data collectors and definitions of terms.
• Develop plans and procedures for proceeding
Conclusion:
Ideally, much of this vetting will take place in face-to-face forums. One approach is to piggyback on existing workshops or events. The Global Housing Indicators GHI already has been presented at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro together with the researchers who implemented the tool in Brazil. In addition, HFHI participated in a conference in Hungary as part of a regional housing event.
This provided an opportunity to publicize the GHI, share the results for places in Eastern Europe where it has been applied, and draw on the experience of Hungary and Armenia to show how the GHI can be used for advocacy. Participation in a regional housing forum in Bangkok, Thailand, also is planned to expand interest from more Asian countries.