Episode description

Are you interested in urban housing affordability?

Summary of the article titled A fresh look at contemporary perspectives on urban housing affordability from 2021 by Marietta E. A. Haffner and Kath Hulse, published in the International Journal of Urban Sciences.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Jennifer Borrero in episode 290 talking about how housing affordability can be achieved through real examples.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what housing affordability issues are and how we can understand them better. This article presents the history and norms of housing affordability and highlights the shift from the physical to the policy side.

Check out the article through this link.

Abstract: The literature on housing affordability has grown rapidly since Hulchanski [1995, p. 489. The concept of housing affordability: six contemporary uses of the housing expenditure-to-income ratio. Housing Studies, 10(4), 471–491] declared that housing researchers should avoid using the term since it is not a robust concept and measurement often lacks validity. In the ensuing 24 years, however, scholars have continued to debate the definition and measurement of housing affordability as well as the prevalence and type of ‘housing affordability problems’ in various countries. This paper is a think piece which takes a fresh look at housing affordability as a concept which has persisted despite considerable contestation and scepticism about its use. It provides a critical and multi-disciplinary assessment of housing affordability starting with early conceptualization of the nexus between economic principles and social norms about housing and living standards to a reworking of housing affordability in the twenty-first century as an urban issue affecting lower and middle-income households in cities, as a consequence of the financialization of housing and urban restructuring. It argues that the housing affordability concept has been repurposed such that the focus is less on understanding housing expenditures in contributing to poverty and disadvantage within the domain of social policy and more on the urban policy challenges of growing inequities in access to urban resources. The paper highlights the challenges for urban policy in adopting and adapting rather than rejecting a multi-dimensional concept of housing affordability and consequently the importance of new ways of measuring urban housing affordability.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.263R - Why affordable, social &public housing must be redefined as economic infrastructure
• No.264 - Interview with Rob Pradolin about the Australian housing crisis

You can find the transcript through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠th⁠i⁠s link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WTF4Cities⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wtf4cities.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ website where the⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠showno⁠t⁠es⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠are also available.

I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.

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