Housing Demand in Provincial Towns I, 1983

In 1981 the Danish Social Research Council (Socialforskningsrådet) in principle approved of three proposed surveys with the aim of mapping out the possibilities of the housing market for meeting the demand for housing. The first was a survey of the housing situation of young people (DDA-0461: Housing Conditions of the 16 to 25-Year-Olds) as it is primarily young people who have difficulties in getting a dwelling of their own. In order to examine the qualitative housing demand it was decided as part two to carry out a survey of households living in insufficient dwellings as regards space or installations (this survey). As the third part-survey the Danish Social Research Council in principle approved of a survey of old people's wishes as regards housing (DDA-1378: Housing Demand in Provincial Towns II, 1983) which concentrated on old people's attitudes to attractive and realistic dwelling alternatives. If there was a general wish among old people to get smaller dwellings the intention was, by removing various barriers to the fulfilment of such wishes, to strengthen the replacement on the housing market and thereby improve the possibilities of meeting the qualitative housing demand. # During the analysis of the first part-survey concerning the housing situation of young people the Danish National Institute of Social Research was contacted by the municipality of Svendborg, which asked for assistance in connection with a mapping out of the housing demand of young people, of people whose housing conditions are bad, and of old people. # It was found that it was a good idea to carry out surveys of housing in local communities, and it was accepted to co-operate with the municipality of Svendborg on the condition that another municipality was found so that the results might, to a certain extent, be used in other small and medium-sized provincial towns. As it turned out that the municipality of Herning was interested in carrying out a similar survey it was decided to carry out the two other part-surveys in those two local communities. At the same time there was a wish to extend the series of surveys with a survey of removals in 1982 based on a co-ordination of data from the Central Population Register (CPR-registret), the Danish Building and Housing Register (Bygnings- og boligregistret - BBR), and the Danish P.A.Y.E. Tax Register (Kildeskatteregistret - KSR). However, this part-survey had to be abandoned because the central registers contained too unprecise information as regards size and quality of the dwellings. # The Danish National Institute of Social Research's survey on living conditions in Denmark (DDA-0070: Danish Welfare Survey, 1976) deals with the population groups which have the worst housing conditions and demonstrates correlations between housing conditions and living conditions as such. As could be expected bad housing conditions were more frequent among families which also in other respects had bad living conditions. # This survey elaborates on this result, and instead of pointing out differences between people living in so-called insufficient dwellings and other population groups the purpose is to examine the possibilities of the worst off families of getting a better dwelling. # The central questions which this survey tries to answer are: # #- How many families live in dwellings which, according to # criteria of space and installations, can be regarded as # insufficient? # #- Are these dwellings just transit dwellings, i.e. that the # residents are, for instance, young people who live in the # dwellings for a maximum of two years - probably without # children? Or are the dwellings inhabited by families who have # found a permanent dwelling? # #- What type of families live in insufficient dwellings and # what resources do they have for a realisation of possible # wishes as regards a new dwelling? # #- How many people did actively look for another dwelling at the # time of the investigation? # #On this background a postal questionnaire was sent out in the spring of 1983 to 1071 households in insufficient dwellings in the municipalities of Svendborg and Herning. After a follow-up interview with households which had not reacted to the postal questionnaire a registration was made of a total of 668 completed questionnaires, i.e. a response percentage of 62 of the sent out questionnaires