Who gets to determine the need? I've lived, though as a child, in a place where housing was distributed "by need" -- the USSR, though even then in the 80s thin

Who gets to determine the need? I've lived, though as a child, in a place where housing was distributed "by need" -- the USSR, though even then in the 80s things were liberalizing some. It was, in retrospect, a horrible combination of corruption, underinvestment in housing, and what would in the modern West be considered terrible living conditions.