2. Assessing Needs & Objectives
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How Can Localities Identify Policies to Address Their Local Housing Needs?
This module discusses how localities can identify policies that meet their housing needs. The first step is to develop a complete understanding of local housing needs by collecting and analyzing data on local housing challenges and effectively engaging residents and outside stakeholders. A key second step is to identify and prioritize the locality’s housing policy objectives. Armed with an understanding of their housing needs and a prioritized set of objectives, localities can select housing policies that address them. To facilitate this process, this section:
- Provides an overview of what a housing needs assessment is and how to prepare one.
- Introduces the Housing Needs Assessment Tool.
- Discusses how to supplement the nationally-available data provided through the tool with local data and knowledge to understand local conditions.
- Walks through the importance of engaging the public and provides an overview of key strategies and resources for facilitating an engagement process.
- Discusses the process of selecting and prioritizing policy objectives.
- Discusses what makes a housing strategy comprehensive and balanced and introduces the Policy Framework that can help localities sort through and select applicable policies.