Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Defining housing affordability presents issues in measurement that have implications for housing policy. Measures of housing affordability are generally based on assumptions on what should be paid for housing. In establishing standards in this way, as in the 30% of income standard used with HUD programs, a single measure is imposed on an entire population and the most severe needs requiring intervention may be missed. Differences may exist across age groups, family types and sizes, income levels, and location which may lead households to choose to pay more than 30% of their income for housing rather than living in units costing less. They may decide to buy or rent homes out of their price or rent ranges as defined by the affordability standard. As such, existing measures may provide housing policymakers with insufficient data for program targeting. Similarly, there are not adequate measures for housing condition. Housing condition problems tend to be more localized than cost burden problems, so that measures are needed at neighborhood level geographies. Further, Census measures do not adequately account for structural condition. Use of local data sources, such as property appraiser data sets, may allow developing local estimates of housing condition. The purpose of this study was to examine the current weaknesses in measuring housing needs and to propose modifications to those measures.
O’Dell et al. (Thu,) studied this question.