Preferences and Barriers of Vulnerable Urban Populations in Affordable Housing in Urban China.

Housing prices have skyrocketed in China's major cities, resulting in a lack of housing affordability and intensifying urban inequality. Taking college graduates, migrant workers, and low-income families as the representatives of vulnerable populations in urban housing, this paper analyzes their preferences and barriers toward affordable housing programs in Nanjing, China. We find that China's affordable housing development and policies still lag far behind the need of vulnerable populations, and there is a mismatch between affordable housing needs and preferences. Rural migrants without local household registration (hukou) who need housing subsidies the most are significantly disadvantaged in current affordable housing policies focusing on local low-income families. Our regression analysis provides insight into the main dissatisfactions and barriers to affordable housing projects and identifies that the policy issues rather than the supply side are the most critical factors. Although migrant workers show a greater preference for affordable housing than other vulnerable populations, they are largely shut out because of exclusionary affordable housing policies. More efforts are needed to improve affordable housing projects, and affordable housing policies should consider the heterogeneous housing preferences of vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]