AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF HOUSING EDUCATORS  

Distribution of this guidebook is part of the educational program of the American Association of Housing Educators (AAHE). AAHE is a dynamic organization that promotes excellence in the planning, development, delivery, and service of decent, safe, affordable, ecologically sound, and appropriate housing for all people. AAHE members focus on the relationships between individual, family, and community wellbeing and the housing environment.   

AAHE provides a major forum for dialogue among educators, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the field of housing. AAHE members are involved in resident instruction, research, and Cooperative Extension in colleges and universities. Their housing interests include community development, consumer education, energy conservation, environment and behavior, historic preservation, interior and environmental design, political and legal aspects, real estate and housing finance, and socioeconomic factors.  

Housing educators are in an excellent position to assist communities in analyzing secondary data, developing housing surveys, and training volunteer surveyors. Communities also can benefit from technical assistance available through AAHE members (e.g., access to graduate students, on-campus and extension faculty, staff, and computer time and other resources). AAHE members willing to consult with or assist communities preparing housing market analyses or needs assessments are listed in APPENDIX D.   

Examples of AAHE members' research include a county housing study prepared by University of Minnesota housing educators (Morris & Goetz, 1990) and a housing needs assessment written for a small city in Kansas (White, 1991). Other members from the University of Georgia collaborated with the Georgia Housing Coalition to develop and administer a housing needs survey in four rural counties (Housing Assistance Council [HAC], 1990). Recommendations for the welfare Standard of Need for the state of Iowa emerged from research by housing educators (Winter, Fletcher, Volker, Schult, Gaddis, Vasquez & Oum, 1991).   

KANSAS CENTER FOR RURAL INITIATIVES  

 The Kansas Center for Rural Initiatives (KCRI) supported the development of this guidebook with funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Assistance was provided in the form of a summer fellowship for the principal author. KCRI is a university-based organization that links the resources of the university with rural Kansans to:  

• Increase coordination among faculty and other units at Kansas State University who are working on issues of rural development. 
• Encourage interdisciplinary policy and applied research on rural development at Kansas State University. 
• Address the needs of rural individuals and groups by mobilizing and delivering financial and human resources, ideas, and information to build self-initiative and empower rural individuals, groups, and communities. 
• Encourage coordinated rural development efforts among higher education institutions, public schools, agencies, and other organizations with rural interests. 

DEVELOPING COMMUNITY HOUSING NEEDS ASSESSMENTS AND STRATEGIES  

Preface  

Today, communities across the nation face the challenge of preparing housing needs assessments and strategies. Yet in many small towns and small cities, the technical expertise to perform these important tasks is unavailable. Members of the American Association of Housing Educators (AAHE), with funding from the Kansas Center for Rural Initiatives, developed this guidebook to help nonmetropolitan communities meet that challenge. The guide is designed for use by planning boards, housing organizations, and activists in smaller communities that depend on volunteers to complete their local or regional housing needs assessments and strategies.   

As a prerequisite to receiving program funds from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (hereafter, HUD), the 1990 National Affordable Housing Act requires communities and states to submit Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategies (CHAS). The CHAS, a five-year housing plan, is to be holistic, flexible, and tailor-made for each community or state. Nonmetropolitan and "nonentitlement" communities can either certify compliance with a statewide CHAS or choose to submit their own. As opposed to the previous HUD-required plans it replaced (e.g., the Housing Assistance Plan), the CHAS deals with the entire housing market--not just with assisted dwellings for lower income persons.   

This self-help guidebook can help community members prepare housing needs assessments and strategies that could be used "as is" or incorporated into a CHAS. Or, individuals and groups may use the guide in conjunction with broader community objectives such as economic development. An area's housing resources can aid or hinder effort to improve its economic base. For example, the multiplier effects of housing production and rehabilitation activities can bolster a community's business recruitment efforts. As a controlling factor in workers' quality of life--housing is often an important issue for industries that seek to relocate. Some small towns even use housing as a form of economic development (e.g., housing for retirees may bring in tax and other dollars without requiring immediate expenditures for schools or infrastructures).   

The authors thank AAHE 1990-92 Presidents Joye Dillman and Jacquelyn W. McCray and the following AAHE members for their valuable input and suggestions on the draft manuscripts: John Merrill, Gladys Shelton, Anne Sweaney, and Loraine Tyler.  

Introduction  

The Community Housing Needs Assessments and Strategies guidebook was designed for individuals and organizations involved in housing issues--particularly in towns or counties that do not employ professional housing or planning staff. Important potential users of the guide include the local planning board, housing authority, nonprofit housing sponsors, homeless assistance providers, special needs' group advocates, etc.   

 The guidebook's objectives are as follows:  

1. To outline a process for developing community housing needs assessments and strategies 
2. To provide information resources for nonmetropolitan communities to use in preparing their housing assessments and strategies, and 
3. To complement HUD's CHAS procedures and available information on preparing the CHAS. 

Guidebook Content and Overview. Persons beginning a housing needs assessment need a firm understanding of what they hope to achieve and how they hope to achieve it. This includes knowing what information to collect and how to interpret the results (Shoemaker, 1987). To meet that challenge, this guidebook provides short chapters describing each of the seven steps in the Community Housing Needs Assessment and Strategic Planning process. Information resources are included for policymakers, administrators, and advocates to adapt in preparing housing assessments and strategies for their communities. Strategists can meet their unique local needs by selecting the most appropriate examples, sample survey questions, blank tables, and choosing from alternatives and resource lists. The glossary will help readers with unfamiliar terms and housing jargon.   

 A needs assessment is labor intensive, complicated to organize and manage, and time consuming. Yet their importance makes developing housing assessments and strategies well worth the effort. The key to success lies in having a well-defined methodology and plan of attack. While preparing a housing needs assessment doesn't require highly technical analyses, it does involve a great deal of information and data collection. But these tasks can be assigned to local volunteers to spread responsibility for the overall load.   

Starting the Job. A common failure of local housing needs assessments is a lack of focused interpretation of community statistical data against applicable housing standards. In many reports, the separate components are not integrated into a unified, comprehensive analysis. Instead, they offer a large collection of unfocused, uninterpreted, unfiltered, unorganized, and irrelevant community information for which no conclusions or strategies have been--or can be--reached (U. S. Dept. of the Army, 1988).   

 To avoid the above pitfall, prepare a large, three-ring binder with labeled dividers for each type of data--an easy framework for collecting, organizing, and analyzing housing needs assessment information. As volunteers complete their assignments, each set of data is inserted into the notebook in the appropriate place.   

 If a data set exceeds more than from two to four pages in length, it may need to be condensed, focused, or summarized so that its contribution can be quickly grasped. It is then ready to become refined decision support information sufficient to validate the report's interpretation, summary, conclusions, and recommendations. When the analyses are complete, the extra information in the binder can become Appendices to the housing needs assessment report.  

 Completing the housing needs assessment and strategies process promptly may be especially important in smaller communities. Similar to large cities, the public attention span or willingness to participate in a long process is limited. Perhaps more important, small cities and counties may be more vulnerable to sudden change. For example, a plant closing that might go relatively unnoticed in a large metropolitan area can have massive repercussions in a community of less than 50,000 population. Drawn-out planning efforts can be overtaken by events such as loss of public bus service, changes in federal or state aid programs, and even natural disasters. At that time, many assumptions and factual bases of the planning effort may need major revision (Sorkin et al., 1984).   

     
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