Housing difficulties; housing situations assessed according to the dimensions proposed by the National Council for Statistical Information

Since the 1990s, the Public Statistics Service (SSP) has invested in methodological research on housing difficulties. This document reports on the progress made in this area, recalling the main work carried out up to the report of the National Council for Statistical Information (CNIS) on the housing problem in 2011, and then in line with the recommendations made by the latter.

The 1996 CNIS report on homelessness recommended describing housing situations as a continuum across dimensions, from the most common and stable situations, to the most precarious and uncomfortable ones, without creating a separate category of homeless people, or setting up an ad hoc statistical system, separate from that used to describe the rest of the population. This approach has been continued.

Between the mid-2000s and early 2010, the number of homeless and roofless people increased, while the number of people in forced cohabitation probably remained rather stable. The number of people living in housing with at least two serious flaws in terms of comfort is higher in 2013 than in 2006, whereas it had fallen in the first half of the 2000s, and the steady decline in overcrowding experienced since the 1980s is coming to a halt in collective housing.