Dwelling counts (occupied, unoccupied and under construction)

Hi all, welcome to the 2018 Census discussion on Dwelling counts. I’m Chris from Statistics New Zealand, and I will be facilitating this discussion. I look forward to hearing what you all have to say over the coming weeks.

Hmmm. Does this mean the place has to have a mail box? Difficult to collect info on places without people in them? And even more difficult this time, if you are not distributing forms door to door?

Interesting claim that it is the only complete count of dwellings. I would have thought that the valuation roll is a much better count and kept up to date because money is involved. The roll even has a no_of_units that can be totalled up. It indicates that the census is 100K short by my rough comparison. This is in addition to the 10.6% flagged as unoccupied and therefore not measured with a dwelling form with details. I would like to see the total counts used, not just occupied dwellings, with an 'unknown' category if a form was not completed for the dwelling.
http://www.ollivier.co.nz/download/census.shtm has some maps of unoccupied dwellings.

@kimollivier thanks for your thoughts here. Regarding the total count of dwellings, Statistics NZ are developing a Property Data Frame that is planned to have addresses from a number of different sources including those that were in the 2013 field books.
It will also have addresses for new building consents, NZ post addresses and potentially other admin data sources.
Census will conduct address canvassing 9-12 months before census day to capture missing addresses.

What constitutes a dwelling needs to be made clear to respondents.

In a previous census, my mother was told that because her house contained two kitchens, her house was actually two dwellings because of this. Two dwelling forms were supplied. My grandfather was the primary user of one of the kitchens, so he filled in a dwelling form for himself, as well as the personal form, and my parents were the primary users of the other kitchen, so they filled in a dwelling form as well.

Hi @shanefield

A dwelling is a building or structure or part of a building or structure that is used (or intended to be used) for human habitation.

There can be more than one dwelling in a particular building. For example, each unit in a block of units is considered to be a dwelling, and each apartment in an apartment building is considered to be a dwelling. Usually each dwelling is fully self-contained eg has its own cooking and bathroom facilities.

If there are individuals or groups of people living separately within a building, then each of these individuals/groups of people is considered to be a household, and the part of the building that each household lives in is considered to be a dwelling and gets a dwelling form. This can happen when a house has been split into two or more units.

In situations where people live together and share the same facilities (eg cooking and bathroom facilities), these people form one household and their total accommodation is considered to be one dwelling.

Does this make it clear?

Hi Chris,

Not sure if this is the applicable variable but knowing the proportion of unoccupied dwellings that are a holiday home/bach would be very useful for Civil Defence and Emergency Management (CDEM). When evacuations are required knowing how many people require evacuation in a particular area is critical. During the holiday off-season usually resident data is sufficient to plan an evacuation. However, during public holidays and the summer holiday season it is impossible to know how many people may require evacuation from holiday hot-spots such as Coromandel and Taupo. A lot of New Zealander's stay in their or their friend's/familie's holiday homes at these times. Knowing how many dwellings are holiday homes/baches in a location would certainly help planning for holiday evacuations.

Thanks
Derek