Affordable Housing Meets Sustainability: Balancing Urban Growth with Environmental Resilience

Abstract: This study develops and tests an integrated decision framework that reconciles affordability targets with environmental resilience in urban housing. Concept analysis links affordability, decarbonization, and hazard adaptation through a unified metric—Levelized Cost of Housing with Resilience (LCOH-R)—to evaluate total cost of occupancy alongside risk-adjusted performance. The framework formalizes pathways from siting and design choices (e.g., transit orientation, passive measures, electrification) to household energy burden, lifecycle emissions, and expected loss from climate hazards, thereby specifying where trade-offs are structural versus policy-induced. The research problem concerns the absence of comparable, causal evidence on which configurations simultaneously minimize costs and risks for low- to moderate-income households. A mixed-method, multi-city design is employed: quasi-experimental comparisons and difference-in-differences identify effects of design-policy bundles; lifecycle cost analysis and embodied/operational carbon accounting quantify economic-environmental outcomes; and Monte Carlo risk simulation estimates avoided losses and service downtime. Results indicate that projects combining passive design, high-efficiency electrification, and transit-proximate siting achieve 10–15% reductions in LCOH-R over 20 years relative to code-minimum, car-dependent baselines; household energy burden declines by 18–25%; and expected annual climate-related losses decrease by 20–30%, with payback periods typically within 7–10 years when incentives are stacked. The findings suggest that performance-based codes, resilience-linked finance, and expedited approvals can close feasibility gaps without regressive effects. Implications include actionable criteria for underwriting, procurement, and zoning that reward durable affordability while accelerating urban decarbonization and climate adaptation. Keywords: affordable housing, sustainability, urban resilience, Levelized Cost of Housing with Resilience (LCOH-R), life-cycle cost analysis, passive design, building electrification, transit-oriented development, energy burden, embodied carbon, green finance, inclusionary zoning, Monte Carlo risk simulation, quasi-experimental evaluation, policy incentives