How does Household Income Affect Access to Housing?

Abstract

[EN] Accessing to housing, in addition to being a right, should be part of a market sufficiently accesible and diverse so as not to generate excessive expenses for households, which do not allow other necessities to be met or may jeopardisee the quality of life.This article considers the issue of access to housing by analysing the relationship between the average net income per household and the housing rental cost index, with the aim of quantifying the extent to which housing costs affect household income within the Comunitat Valenciana. It focuses especially on the rental system, regarded as the tenure regime prevailing for the most vulnerable households.A compilation of the available data is undertaken, and with this information, the percentage of the average household income of families that must go to rent payment is calculated, and to what extent this economic effort is excessive. Different income brackets are established to analyse which sectors of the population have trouble accessing a home.The results obtained suggest that a high percentage of households have to spend over 30% of income on paying rent, and it is in households with lower income in which this percentage soares, emphasising the situation of vulnerability.Due to a lack of available data, it was not possible to geographically locate the areas with a strained residential market, defined by the Draft Law on the Right to Housing, from which it can be deduced that adding data collection mechanisms to existing ones is necessary to achieve a detailed analysis, essential to implement more effective housing access policies in highly vulnerable areas.