Performance index for public housing in East Malaysia

Low-income housing in both developing and developed countries faces several unhealthy conditions that expose the dwellers to hazards. Considering that achieving overall citizen satisfaction requires the provision of healthy and affordable housing, Malaysia has consistently initiated different housing programs to support its citizens, primarily low-income households. One such is the Government Housing Schemes, whose performance has been called to question over the years. This study aimed to develop a performance index to evaluate public houses in East Malaysia by considering a four-step evaluation such as item selection, an examination of relationship, index scoring and index validation. Contributing factors towards the performance of public housing were determined and evaluated following their importance to create a performance index for the public housing in East Malaysia. Some primary factors and their indicators (the sub-factors) were identified based on an extensive literature review. After that, copies of questionnaires were administered in different locations and analysed using a decision support tool. The result indicated the importance of the performance index in contributing to low-income household's health, comfort and improved living affordability.