There are many different ways of conducting a housing needs survey.
Postal surveys
Postal surveys delivered to all of the households in the area are a popular way to assess housing need. This could be the community council area or the area generally felt to belong to your community.
The questionnaire can be sent by post with households returning the form in a FREEPOST envelope or to return boxes in the local shop, pub, school or church. Alternatively the questionnaire could be delivered by community members and either returned as above or picked up by community members two weeks later. The method used will depend on how confidential the questions asked in the questionnaire are.
Where you are asking questions about income you may want to use a postal method for the returns and request help from Rural Housing Scotland to collate and analyse the responses. This can give people surveyed confidence about the confidentiality of the survey and help generate a good response rate and genuine answers.
Download an example Housing Needs Survey.
Door to door survey
An alternative to a postal survey would be to conduct a face to face survey with each household in the community. This can be effective in small communities and where there are a number of volunteers to undertake the survey.
Issues regarding confidentiality may mean this method is unsuitable. However, an outside organisation such as like Rural Housing Scotland might be better placed to conduct a door to door survey in a small community.
Pre-selection
Where there is obviously cases of housing need and homelessness, such as caravan dwellers or adults living with extended family, it may only be necessary to undertake a survey of people already identified as in need – either by post or face to face. If
this type of survey is chosen it is important to ensure that the whole community knows that it is happening so that households with less obvious housing needs have a chance to put themselves forward.
Housing surgery
Pre-publicised drop-in sessions, or housing surgeries, can capture views from people with pressing housing needs, those just looking to explore different options, or people looking for information from Rural Housing Scotland or similar organisations. As well as providing help and advice to individuals on the day, the number and range of enquiries received during the surgery provides useful data to measure local housing needs and demands.
Waiting list information
As well as undertaking your own research on local housing needs it is worthwhile gathering information from local housing providers about demand for their housing. This can be the local council or housing association waiting list.
As well as the length of waiting list, it is worth finding out when the last council house was let. When we at Rural Housing Scotland undertook a housing needs survey on Colonsay there was a small waiting list for the few council houses on the island. This was not because there was low demand but because the last council let had been 14 years before so local people didn’t think it was worthwhile being on the list
Private estates can also provide information on the level of demand for their housing.
As well as looking at housing need it is also crucial to gather evidence on local house prices and the local housing market to demonstrate there is a lack of local affordable housing.