Affordable Housing Measures: Need, Goals, and Scores

Three measures that inform regional and local housing policy

While the Council provides a variety of demographic research and analysis useful for understanding the region's housing landscape, the future affordable housing need, Livable Communities Act (LCA) goals, and Housing Performance Scores are the main measures used by the Council to work with communities to address affordable housing.

Read more about affordable housing in the Twin Cities region in this one-page summary (pdf).

Understanding NEED, GOALS, and SCORES

These three critical measures of regional housing policy are distinct but sometimes confused—check out these overviews to learn more about NEED, GOALS, and SCORES.

NEED, GOALS, SCORES in one-page (pdf)

Watch this 5-minute tutorial about NEED, GOAL, SCORES

Learn more and download current information

NEED

Communities' share of the region's projected need for affordable housing over the next decade

SCORES

Quantifying communities' efforts around affordable housing for priority funding

GOALS

An aspirational but realistic number of new affordable housing units to build by 2020

Existing Housing Assessments

An Existing Housing Assessment is not a comprehensive picture of a community's housing stock but it is a useful starting point to understanding a community's housing needs. The data include

affordability level of existing housing units
tenure
housing types
publicly subsidized units
housing cost burdened households

For community-specific data, visit the Local Planning Handbook's Community Pages. We've compiled the Existing Housing Assessment data for every county, city and township into one file (excel file).