Housing indicators
Housing indicators are policy indicators designed to measure progress toward achieving housing policy goals. A housing indicator is a single, usually dimensionless number that points the way to improving housing outcomes. Because housing policy is heavily intertwined with other sectors such as social, economic, demographic and labour policy, and with the construction and finance industries, it requires a fairly comprehensive system of indicators to cover most of the key policies and issues. Housing indicator sets may contain political bias supporting the agendas or interests of those drawing up the system.. The most sustained effort in housing indicators has been the World Bank/UN-Habitat Housing Indicators Programme, which was operational from 1992 to 2001. A set of 35 housing indicators was subject to a pilot test in 52 countries in 1992-3. A reduced set of 10 indicators was collected in 254 cities as part of the Urban and Housing Indicators Programme in preparation for the Habitat II Conference in 1996, and again in 1999. These housing indicators were intended to lift the profile of housing in national policy, and to act as a diagnostic system to detect poorly functioning housing markets and poorly directed housing policy. The most important indicator, the median