Preparing a national housing needs assessment

The HNA methodology described in this paper projects the number of housing units required to meet needs for up to 20 years and the level of investment required to provide these units. While the HNA can prove useful to A.I.D. staff and consultants, its primary purpose is to aid developing country planners and policymakers in projecting their own countries" needs for budget, finance, or policy planning purposes. Chapter II outlines an overview of the methodology in reference to a BASIC computer model created specifically for the HNA. Chapter III specifies the variables crucial to estimating the demand for housing and the capital necessary to meet this demand. It may also be possible with these variables to project future levels of private investment and to conduct a sensitivity analysis to determine the impact of key variables on the assessment. Chapter IV organizes the variables into 8 modules, each of which represents a block of calculations to be performed. (Author abstract, modified)