مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

                 مدیریت و اقتصاد

 مجله امگا – Omega

It is imperative that both affordability and sustainability issues are simultaneously tackled in order to create successful housing and communities. Affordable housing alone is not enough to achieve community and family wellbeing; households need decent quality affordable housing that is well located within good quality environments that are clean, safe and have good access to jobs, key services and public transport [1-3]. There is both an efficiency and equity imperative to ensure that affordable housing is environmentally sustainable and socially equitable [4]. Accordingly, it may not only be the cost of housing that needs to be addressed in order to improve housing affordability; access to amenities, facilities and the energy efficiency of housing may need to be improved to create successful and sustainable living environments [5, 6];. However, traditional measures of affordability are one dimensional and continue to focus solely on economic criteria as the basis of assessment [7-10].

Researchers suggest that the traditional way of defining and measuring housing affordability – the relationship between household’s income and expenditure – is too limited [11- 13]. Accordingly, in order to assist in achieve successful housing outcomes, there is a need to develop a more holistic housing affordability assessment tool that is better aligned with sustainability concerns and household wellbeing.

Limitations in the assessment of affordability can be eliminated by the use of methods which are able to take into account a wider range of criteria than traditional methods do. The paper aims to test a housing affordability assessment methodology that is more holistic and capable of considering such a broad spectrum of criteria that affect the wellbeing of households – including economic, environmental and social aspects. Here, a number of widely used MCDM methods – the Weighted Sum Model (WSM), the Weighted Product Model (WPM), the revised Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) –applied for the assessment of sustainable housing affordability. The rankingsof the alternatives and their tolerance to change in criterion weightsare comparedamongst selected MCDM methods. The comparative analysis of these different methods will aid in establishing the most appropriate and compatible methodology for the purpose of sustainable housing affordability assessment.