Key Takeaways

• Housing affordability debates often assume a shared definition of “affordable,” even though administrators across institutional roles define and apply the term in fundamentally different ways. 
• Research shows that policymakers, institutions, and communities often rely on different definitions. When these definitions are misaligned, policies may appear effective on paper while failing to address the lived realities of housing instability.

Why Affordability Matters

Across the United States and especially in California, housing costs have risen faster than wages, leaving millions of households struggling to remain stably housed. Nearly half of renters nationwide now spend more than 30% of their income on housing, which is the federal government’s threshold for unaffordable housing¹. When housing costs consume such a substantial portion of household income, families often reduce spending on food, healthcare, transportation, and education, creating a cascading economic instability and diminished well-being². This study is informed by my professional experience leading housing affordability and access initiatives within a large public university system (the University of California). It is also informed by my doctoral research examining how administrators define and operationalize affordability. 

As governments, universities, and local communities invest heavily in housing development and affordability initiatives, an important question remains unresolved: what does “affordable” actually mean? This is not just an abstract question but one that directly shapes policy outcomes. Since affordability definitions are closely tied to how problems are diagnosed and resources are allocated, incomplete or inaccurate definitions lead to incomplete or misaligned policy interventions. Unclear and competing definitions of affordability create a critical gap for policymakers and institutions. While research has shown that existing definitions are incomplete, less attention is paid to how affordability is actually defined and operationalized in practice. This article addresses the outlined gap by examining how administrators understand and apply the concept of affordability, and how these differences shape institutional priorities, resource allocation, and policy responses.

Four Distinct Ways to Define Housing Affordability 

To address this gap, my research identifies four common frameworks used by administrators to define affordability. These frameworks shape how institutions set priorities, allocate resources, and pursue housing policy solutions. Further, these frameworks are often used simultaneously across institutional roles, rather than applied consistently within a single system.

1. Market affordability

Affordability is defined by market conditions, development costs, and supply constraints. Solutions typically focus on increasing housing production and balancing supply and demand³.

2. Compliance affordability

In this version, affordability is defined through regulatory thresholds and formulas, most commonly the standard that households should spend no more than 30% of their income on housing⁴. Solutions typically focus on providing tax credits to developers that include affordable units in larger housing projects.

3. Compassion affordability

Here, affordability is understood through households’ lived experiences. From this perspective, housing is affordable only if individuals can also meet basic needs such as food, healthcare, and transportation after paying rent⁵. This definition is common among social workers, but institutions often struggle to translate compassion-based affordability into effective policy. 

4. Equity affordability

Affordability is framed as a structural issue shaped by historical inequality, discrimination, and unequal access to resources. Policy responses emphasize the redistribution of public and private property, subsidies and vouchers for historically under-resourced communities, and the decentralization of the administration of housing resources⁶. 

These definitions often coexist within the same housing system, reflecting competing logics rather than a shared understanding. In practice, administrators and policymakers often make decisions based on fundamentally different definitions of affordability, leading to divergent priorities, conflicting policy approaches, and, ultimately, limiting the effectiveness of efforts to improve students’ housing access.

Policy Implications

Improving housing affordability requires greater clarity about what policymakers mean by “affordable.” Without a shared or explicitly defined understanding, policy interventions are often built on inconsistent assumptions about what households can reasonably pay and what constitutes economic stability. For example, a policy grounded in a fixed-income threshold may yield different outcomes than one that accounts for total household expenses, leading to a gap between how affordability is defined and how it is actually experienced.

Greater clarity requires policymakers to evaluate whether commonly used affordability metrics, particularly the 30% of income standard, reflect the full range of household expenses, including food, healthcare, transportation, and childcare. It also requires assessing how affordability policies account for regional variation in cost of living and differences in household composition, such as single students, student parents, or multigenerational families. In addition, policymakers must consider whether their definitions of affordability account for structural inequalities embedded in housing markets, including historical patterns of exclusion and unequal access to resources, rather than treating affordability as a purely individual or market-based issue.

Finally, improving affordability requires aligning policy tools with these definitions. Policymakers must examine how supply-side strategies, such as zoning reforms and building code changes intended to increase housing production, interact with demand-side supports, including subsidies, vouchers, and targeted financial assistance for lower-income residents. When affordability definitions explicitly account for lived economic realities and are paired with coordinated policy approaches, housing strategies are more likely to produce consistent, equitable, and effective outcomes for those most at risk of housing instability.

Camden Doolittle, EdD, is a housing policy and higher education administrator at the University of California, Davis. Their research examines how institutions define and pursue housing affordability and how policy decisions shape access to stable housing for vulnerable populations. Doolittle’s work focuses on the intersection of housing policy, higher education, and economic equity, with particular attention to how definitions of affordability influence outcomes.

¹ Jennifer Ludden, “Housing Is Now Unaffordable for a Record Half of All U.S. Renters, Study Finds,” National Public Radio, 25 January, 2024.

² Katrin B. Anacker, “Introduction: Housing Affordability and Affordable Housing,” International Journal of Housing Policy 19, no. 1 (2019): 1–16.

³ Richard K. Green and Stephen Malpezzi, A Primer on U.S. Housing Markets and Housing Policy (Milwaukee, WI: American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, 2003).

⁴ Matthew M. Brooks, “Measuring America’s Affordability Problem: Comparing Alternative Measurements of Affordable Housing,” Housing Policy Debate (2022); U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Glossary of Terms to Affordable Housing,” August 18, 2011.

⁵ Michael E. Stone, “Shelter Poverty: The Chronic Crisis of Housing Affordability,” New England Journal of Public Policy 20, no. 1 (2004): 107–119.

⁶ Matthew M. Brooks, “Persistent Disparities in Affordable Rental Housing among America’s Ethnoracial Groups,” Social Science Research 113 (2023); J. N. Robinson, “Surviving Capitalism: Affordability as a Racial ‘Wage’ in Contemporary Housing Markets,” Social Problems 68, no. 2 (2021): 321–339.