Bridging the gap between affordable housing and livable home

Abstract

Housing plays an important role in people’s wellbeing, contributing to the physical and psychological health, safety and security outcomes, and love and belongingness need. But the major challenge in this context is the establishment of adequate, affordable, livable and sustainable housing standards for the population. Although the sustainable housing was a big issue to researchers, practitioner and policy maker for some considerable time, and more recently attention has been drawn to the issue of declining affordability in housing. The main problem in this subject has always been in identifying the affordable, sustainable and livable home standards for societal well being. Because researchers believe that there is a gap existed between affordable, livable and sustainable home criteria. Therefore, this study presents a research on the importance of housing to the people. It examines on how certain standards need to be encountered in housing for the people’s well being. The purpose is to present an overview of livable affordable housing definition and to relate that to people’s need so that the gap between the terms will be connected. Data was gathered from fifty respondents, using “housing criteria questionnaires”. The result indicated that housing need to be adequate basic standard that provides reasonable access to work opportunities and community services and that is available at a cost, which does not cause substantial hardship to the occupants. Eventually, the outcomes can help researchers, planners, architects, policy makers and others in the formulation of criteria guidelines for the introducing of quality housing as part of the effort to incorporate these features into any new housing projects, so that the citizen will continue to enjoy the benefits of adequate, affordable and quality housing.