This paper discusses relevant defini-tions of affordable housing in order to aim for a common understanding of the topic. This common understanding consists of two dimensions – the rea-sonable economic burden and housing quality. Both dimensions can be exam-ined from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. A qualitative perspective consists of social norms, depended on specific historical, geographical and cultural context and determines quantitative thresholds of affordabil-ity. A historical overview of the most important developments in regard to affordable housing in Munich helps to extract applied strategies and ana-lyse them in accordance to their future relevance. Finally the most important strategies extracted from the histori-cal analysis are reviewed and catego-rised according to their relevance to planners and policy makers.