Our CEO's first attempt at writing out his thoughts on Medium brought us an article with 5 parts that talks about the potential for the affordable housing market Vietnam and how to find ways to make affordable truly affordable for everyone.
This is the first of 5 parts. Stay connected to see Part 2 of this series soon.
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Part 1: Why Do We Need Affordable Housing?
As defined by the McKinsey report “A blueprint for addressing the global affordable housing challenge”, the definition of “affordable housing” varies across economies, but generally it involves various types of financial mechanism centering on a specific level of income that are eligible for housing assistance, which comprise of a standard that constitutes minimum socially acceptable housing.
Furthermore, the definition of affordability for housing communities should also include minimum standards for localized basic amenities such as water and electricity as well as access to essential services such as businesses, schools and healthcare facilities. Basically, affordable housing are created for the regionally defined middle to low-income class citizens.
I stumbled on this McKinsey report during my Google search for a better understanding of what is the true definition of affordable housing. There were many references to Social Housing associated with Affordable Housing. But I realized that affordable housing is not the same as social housing and in many cases, affordable housing are not even that “affordable” to begin with. Therefore, I will use the term “low-cost” in many instances instead of affordable in order to steer away from this misconception.
During my search, there were many questions that I can barely find straight answers to and they were notably the most basic questions such as why is it so hard to create profitable affordable housing for everyone on this planet? Are developers that greedy? Don’t we have the technology now in 2016 to significantly reduce construction costs? And if governments are always in favor of affordable housing, why are there still so many barriers for social-conscious developers outside of financial means?
So why did I search for this and what is my intent after finding answers to my questions? Well, let me give you a quick backstory of where all of this came from.
