Housing Accessibility Of Affordable Housing In The United States

Housing is a basic need. Improvements in infrastructure and service provision do not always lead to housing improvements in the absence of changes in other conditions, especially security of tenure. ‘Increased security of tenure positively and significantly affect[s] the likelihood of housing investment’ (Struyk & Lynn 1983: 453). Housing accessibility can generate prosperity and social justice (De Soto 1989) through a virtuous circle of improvements (Ferguson 1996). However, a high percentage of city dwellers in developing countries (commonly known as the 'South') become marginalised from the supply of formal habitable housing. Over 90 per cent of urban slum dwellings are found in the developing world (UNFPA 2007). Close to 37 per cent of

Inclusionary housing is a planning policy to provide affordable housing for low-income people in cities. Inclusionary zoning emerged in the USA during the 1970s. The mechanism is currently widely implemented in the USA where it fits into a variety of state or provincial legal and regulatory schemes. It is also extensively applied in Canada, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, India, South Africa, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia, and other countries (Schwartz et al. 2012, Calavita & Mallach 2010). According to M. M. Rahman (2001) in the Philippines and Indonesia 20 to 40 per cent of housing in all housing developments is provided to low-income groups. He also mentioned that the governments in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Colombia sell serviced sites to the developers at subsidised prices on a condition that the developer would build non-profit affordable housing as part of their provision. V. Basolo (2011) stated that over 100 cities and countries have adopted inclusionary housing as a local policy and experienced a mixed record of

However, through a literature review on housing in developing countries, it is implicit that the cities in the South have rarely adopted an inclusionary housing policy, rather they have adopted an exclusionary policy in urban housing; and the planning system is stimulating the development of slums and squatter housing. Moreover, there is a research gap about the possibility of generating social justice and increasing affordable housing for the poor through planning instruments. The planning system in the South, which was adopted from the North, does not consider inclusiveness of the poor (Watson 2009). Therefore, it is necessary to understand the potential of an inclusionary housing policy to promote social justice and supply affordable housing for the low-income bracket in cities in developing