The Affordability of Adequate Housing

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.