REDEHOPE: Reliable Data for Evidence-Based Housing Policies

Housing policies, a key factor in ensuring access to decent dwelling (SDG 11), rely upon the sharing between public and private stakeholders of many forms of data. However, states struggle in building effective sociotechnical systems for data collection and circulation (”data ecologies”, DEs), resulting in data siloing, redundancies and inefficiency.

Based on the rigorous study of existing data ecologies in several target countries, this project intends to develop a diagnostic tool to help countries identify issues in their housing data ecology, respond appropriately to such issues and access appropriate dataset to formulate more robust, evidence-based housing policies for the benefit of people.

Background

The University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the UN Economic Commission of Europe (UNECE) discovered through preliminary research that many countries struggle in building effective housing-related socio-technical systems for data collection and circulation – that is, ‘housing data ecologies’. In turn, those issues hinder the robustness and fairness of housing policies. Conversely, good DEs inform solid evidence-based housing policies, critical for objective long-term housing strategies, efficient monitoring of their implementation, and SDG reporting.

Preliminary research has shown that, while specific problems are often well-known by stakeholders, countries lack (1) instruments to comprehensively assess their data ecologies as wholes and (2) localisable improvement strategies. Lacking these two, problems remain intractable and are accepted as such.

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Aim

This project intends to provide states with a flexible diagnostic tool in the form of an assessment guide (to be converted into an interactive website at a later stage), to comprehensively assess their data ecologies as a whole and help devising strategic roadmaps to improve national housing data ecologies. The project’s main stakeholders are housing-related institutions, both public and private.

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Impact

The long-term impact sought is threefold:

1. Increase the capacity and fairness of states’ housing policies;
2. Improve states SDG monitoring capacity;
3. Improve the understanding, within the fields of urban planning and of data studies, of the relationship between housing data and institutional contexts.

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Key activities

1. Collection and analysis of policy documents in selected target countries and preliminary modelling;
2. Fieldwork in target countries resulting in development of diagnostic tool and supporting documentation;
3. Field testing diagnostic tool in two target countries, assessment of results and model adjustment, drafting of final Assessment Guide Document;
4. Outreach, dissemination and capacity-building activities to ensure uptake of tools by UN economic commissions and national states.

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Project updates

Coming soon