Affordable housing

[33] They note that such a measurement fails to take into account transportation costs (such as multiple cars, gas, maintenance), which are usually a household's second-largest expenditure.

[33] Per CNT's measurement, people who live in location-efficient neighborhoods that are compact, mixed-use, and have convenient access to jobs, services, transit and amenities tend to have lower transportation costs.

[53][54] In Australia, the Victoria state government revealed plans to build 800,000 new homes over a decade from 2024 to help fix the housing crisis.

However, Dr Duncan Maxwell, director of Monash University's Future Building Initiative, has shown concerns that Victoria's construction workforce is too small for the state government to meet its ambitious new homebuilding goal of 80,000 homes a year and training would be key to reaching the housing goal but "change is required" from both the government and the construction industry to rethink the way homes are built in Australia.

Specifically, Dr Maxwell said that to reach that target, the sector would need to rely on technology and prefabricated materials and focus on designing smaller and more efficient buildings.

The ad valorem property tax policy combined with rising prices made it difficult or impossible for low income residents to keep pace.

Research has found that cities are more likely to have zoning restrictions, which effectively limits the expansion of affordable housing units in these areas.

[63] These patterns of zoning ultimately force the income divide between different socioeconomic groups to widen by creating enclaves of low-income and wealthy neighborhoods.

[63] As the world's population continues to increase (expected to reach 9 billion by mid century),[65] more and more people are inhabiting cities for the benefits of industrialization.

[67] This kind of growth however brings challenges to urban development as cities are tasked with efficiently using resources in accordance with the global demand for affordable housing.

[69] Slums typically form in developing countries as populations migrate from rural to urban areas searching for employment and better living conditions.

But due to the higher prices of urban living and a range of other factors such as economic stagnation, migrators find themselves forced to relocate to such slums.

[72] The same principle is applied in the United States as people who are unable to afford their mortgage or rent are evicted and left homeless.

As stated in President Trump's Executive Order Establishing a White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing, such regulations include: “overly restrictive zoning and growth management controls; rent controls; cumbersome building and rehabilitation codes; excessive energy and water efficiency mandates; unreasonable maximum-density allowances; historic preservation requirements; overly burdensome wetland or environmental regulations; outdated manufactured-housing regulations and restrictions; undue parking requirements; cumbersome and time-consuming permitting and review procedures; tax policies that discourage investment or reinvestment; overly complex labor requirements; and inordinate impact or developer fees.” These regulations reduce the supply of housing and as a result increase the price of a home.

Given the relationship between higher home prices and homelessness, the report simulated the impact of deregulation on housing in individual metropolitan areas.

[76] The availability of affordable housing in proximity of mass transit and linked to job distribution has become severely imbalanced in this period of rapid regional urbanization and growing density convergence.

"Faced with few affordable options, many people attempt to find less expensive housing by buying or renting farther out from their place of employment, but long commutes often result in higher transportation costs that erase any savings on shelter.

[84] "In addition to the distress it causes families who cannot find a place to live, lack of affordable housing is considered by many urban planners to have negative effects on a community's overall health.

[88] In a 2013 survey, a lack of affordable housing was the number one in the list of causes of homelessness among families with children and unaccompanied individuals.

[89] Studies through the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry have shown that access to rapid permanent housing with treatment, rehabilitation, and support services have led to a decrease in shelter and emergency department costs.

[90] Affordable Housing is found to reduce the likelihood that a family will be forced to move due to financial challenges such as eviction, foreclosure, or rent increase.

[94][95][96] One method emphasized is creating disaster-resistant affordable housing units to reduce the impact of climate change-related natural disasters.

In the simplest of terms, affordability of housing refers to the amount of capital one has available in relation to the price of the goods to be obtained.

[99][100] "Housing Policies provide a remarkable litmus test for the values of politicians at every level of office and of the varied communities that influence them.

some form of publicly funded allowance strategy can be implemented providing individual households with adequate income to afford housing.

[133] Until 2018, in Los Angeles, for an affordable housing development to be allowed to be built, it required a "letter of acknowledgement" from the city councilperson in whose district it would be constructed.

[142][143] In Vienna, Austria, social housing may be completely government built and run or include a mixture of public land and private-sector construction and management.

In Brussels, an architectural firm was able to repurpose a soap factory, creating affordable housing units that included one- to 6-bedroom apartments, studios, lofts, and duplexes.

For example, in Germany, cities including Berlin and Hamburg have established partnerships with private developers to construct new affordable housing units.

Additionally, Hamburg modified urban planning regulations in locations occupied predominantly by low-income individuals to simplify the process of affordable housing construction.