Housing suitability explained Place Forecast Feature

Abbreviated as HOSD; referenced by 0 other explainers

Housing suitability shows whether the homes in an area have enough bedrooms for the people living in them. It counts occupied private dwellings, the homes people were living in on Census night.

These figures are Place Forecast estimates based on Census data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The ABS compares each home's bedrooms with who lives there. It uses a common rule of thumb, the Canadian National Occupancy Standard:

  • No more than two people share a bedroom.
  • Children under five may share, whatever their sex.
  • Children under 18 of the same sex may share.
  • Each adult on their own, and each couple, has a bedroom of their own.
  • A person living alone can live in a studio or bedsitter.

There are eleven categories:

  • Four or more extra bedrooms needed.
  • Three extra bedrooms needed.
  • Two extra bedrooms needed.
  • One extra bedroom needed.
  • No bedrooms needed or spare.
  • One bedroom spare.
  • Two bedrooms spare.
  • Three bedrooms spare.
  • Four or more bedrooms spare.
  • Unable to determine.
  • Not stated.

A home that needs extra bedrooms is crowded by this rule. A home with bedrooms spare has more room than the rule calls for. A spare bedroom is any room the household counts as a bedroom, so it may be a study or a guest room.

Unable to determine and Not stated cover homes where the Census answers were not enough to work out a result.

Empty homes are not counted. Nor are non-private dwellings, such as hotels, hospitals, aged-care homes, or hostels.

Two ABS household groups are left out here. They are Visitor only homes and homes that do not fit a group, which are mostly homes that returned no Census form. So the total here sits a little below the full ABS count of homes for the area.

To see how many bedrooms homes have, look at number of bedrooms. To see how big households are, look at average household size.

Reading this data fairly

These figures show how people answered Census questions. Here are the equity caveats to keep in mind. They keep the numbers fair:

  • The rule reflects one idea of who should share a room. Many families choose to share, for comfort, care or culture, and do not feel crowded.
  • In many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, kinship means care is shared across many adults and homes. The rule does not show how a household shares its space.
  • Many culturally and linguistically diverse households also share space by choice.
  • The same rule is used to track Closing the Gap target 9a, on appropriately sized housing. Closing the Gap counts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people rather than homes, so its figures do not compare directly with the shares here.
  • Where many homes need extra bedrooms, it often reflects the cost and supply of larger homes nearby.
  • Read each category as a count of homes. It is not a judgement about the people who live in them. Reading it that way would be deficit framing.

See the marker methodology for how these figures are calculated and their limitations.

Sources

Readable