• Q: What is affordability measuring, and why is it a better indicator of

housing affordability than housing cost alone?

A: Housing affordability is measured in comparison to household incomes. The index is the house price-to-income ratio. Since different places in the world may have different economic levels, average salary, and living cost standards, having this indicator associated with incomes could better represent the local residents’ ability to purchase housing.

• Q: What are the housing affordability rating categories? Who determined them and are they to be ‘trusted’? (You have seen in the previous map how different classification breaks produce very different visual impressions).

A: The rating categories are affordable (Median house price divided by median household income: 3 and under), moderately unaffordable (3-4), seriously unaffordable (4-5), severely unaffordable (5 and over). These categories are determined by the median multiple index: Median house price divided by median household income. They are to be trusted by most studies and evaluations today.

• Q: Is affordability a good indicator of a city’s ‘livability’?

A: Since housing is the very need for all people in the world, failing to find suitable and affordable shelters would lead to numerous serious social problems such as gentrification (poor people being evicted by the rich), decreasing potential standards of living, increasing poverty rates, diminishing discretionary incomes, decreasing happiness level of citizens, etc. I see it a strange paradox that Vancouver been ranked by the NO.3 most livable city in the world but also being one of the cities with unaffordable housing in the world. Is this livability evaluated by citizens or rich foreign investors?