Marginal housing situations: methods and public statistical sources#Report of the SML group

The working group on marginal housing situations, of which this volume is the report, has examined the various public statistical sources that enable to clarify the issue of housing hardship, and has elaborated recommendations in order to improve these sources and to work out new ones. The report begins with a synthesis of these recommendations. An introductory text concerns the methods of description of housing situations, and their classifications by nomenclatures or by lists. First, a series of chapters examine the various marginal housing situations (homeless people, persons living in a hotel, etc.), as well as the statistical sources that can be used to know them better, the precautions to be taken and the main bibliographical references concerning the use of these sources. The following chapters deal with additional points: the inadequacy between the accommodation and the household which occupies it (overcrowding, affordability difficulties, etc.); the question of the statistical use of the number attributed when applying for social housing; the knowledge supplied by a number of surveys on persons having previously experienced a homeless episode; the sources that can be used at the national level, and at the local level when the national sources are not statistically representative, to estimate the number of people who have a priority for rehousing according to the DALO legislation. This first part ends by detailed recommendations on the sources to be maintained, the improvements to be made to them and on the complementary analyses and studies that are considered necessary. In the second part, a synthetic table indicates, for every housing situation of interest, the main sources in which information can be found, the geographical levels for which these sources are statistically significant and the main precautions to be taken when using them. Finally the volume ends with a form that describes each statistical source.