The Affordability of Adequate Housing

Abstract

A "quality-based" measure of housing affordability problems employing the cost of housing just meeting adequacy standards is proposed as an improvement over the conventional "high" rent-to-income criterion. Based on "Annual Housing Survey" data, affordability difficulties grew between 1975 and 1983 by either measure. The conventional measure, however, overestimated the extent of quality-based affordability difficulty for renters by 20% in 1975 and 24% in 1983 based upon Section 8 housing quality standards. In addition, 35% of rental households with an affordability problem by the conventional measure did not have an affordability problem by the quality-based measure, while 19 to 23% of rental households found to have an affordability problem by the quality-based measure were not so classified using the conventional measure. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Identifying Variables Influencing Tenant Affordability to Pay Rent in Ipoh City Council Public Housing

“…This was due to the lower socioeconomic standing among blacks and Hispanics. Besides that, studies carried out by [24], [19], [1], [4] and [21] also found that different ethnic groups and races faced differing housing costs due to their differing socioeconomic status. This study on the other hand, revealed that variables such as household structure, type of work, level of education, type of housing, household income and household expenditure on housing costs and non-housing costs do not have significant influences on rent arrears prevailing amongst tenants in MBI public housing.…”

“…Lower income households and high housing costs entitle them to housing benefits. Households have to occupy small sized and low quality dwellings as trade-offs for their lack of affordability in obtaining suitable housing [21,28]. Various methods have been introduced by past researchers to measure housing affordability levels among households which are generally used to analyse the financial ability displayed by households [23].…”

“…Researchers include v) Level of Education as a variable to study tenant affordability where a higher level of education guarantees a good job and the salary obtained is able to guarantee a better [20,21,31] found that lower educated households face problems of affordability [28] proved that households with lower level of education face difficulties procuring standard quality housing as they have to spend the bulk of their income on housing. Findings from a study by [14] showed that it was difficult for a lower educated and lower income American to own his dream house due to increase in house prices and decrease in wages received.…”

“…Findings from a study by [14] showed that it was difficult for a lower educated and lower income American to own his dream house due to increase in house prices and decrease in wages received. The last variable used is vi) Housing Location where households living in urban areas bear higher housing liabilities [4,21]. A good location comprises community facilities in the vicinity, proximity to markets, shorter distance between the workplace and the housing and ease to find public transportation [27].…”

Affordability of water supply in Mongolia: empirical lessons for measuring affordability

“…It has been mainly the housing sector on that theoretical considerations have been executed (see Lerman/Reeder 1987;Stone 1990Stone , 1993Stone , 2006Hancock 1993;Chaplin/Freeman 1999;Thalmann 1999Thalmann , 2003Kutty 2005;Lux 2007). Only in recent years these considerations have also been applied -to a very modest extent -to utility markets.…”