Print Email Facebook Twitter User Costs and Housing Expenses: Towards a more Comprehensive Approach to Affordability Title User Costs and Housing Expenses: Towards a more Comprehensive Approach to Affordability Author Haffner, M.E.A. Heylen, K. Faculty OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment Department OTB Research Date 2011-04-18 Abstract Recently housing affordability has reached the agenda in Flanders and the Netherlands, giving a good reason to present a review of the concept of affordability and different definitions. The concept of short-term affordability, which is concerned with financial access to a dwelling and is based on cash flows, is combined with the concept of long-term affordability, which is about the costs of housing consumption. The use of these concepts is illustrated for Flanders and the Netherlands. They show that each concept has its own uses and that they are not interchangeable. However, both concepts indicate that in 2005 higher-income households, and especially homeowners (with a mortgage), were relatively better off than lower-income households, particularly renters. Homeowners' higher income levels on average more than compensate for their higher expenses in comparison with tenants; they also receive higher explicit subsidization and in times of rising prices they also receive expected returns on housing. Subject affordabilityexpensesFlandershousingthe Netherlandsuser costsOA-Fund TU Delft To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8a84d219-fc08-4a59-9feb-5d3cfda37663 DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2011.559754 Publisher Taylor & Francis ISSN 0267-3037 Source https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2011.559754 Source Housing Studies, 26 (4), 2011 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights (c) 2011 Taylor & Francis Files PDF Haffner_2011.pdf 186.18 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:8a84d219-fc08-4a59-9feb-5d3cfda37663/datastream/OBJ/view