China has been implementing housing reform programs in the housing industry during the last two decades. Housing policy has been shifted towards prompting the affordable housing construction in order to address the housing problems of vulnerable groups. Currently, the affordable housing programs in China, designed to target low-to-medium households, include Cheap Rent Housing (CRH), Public Rental Housing (PRH), Economic Comfortable Housing (ECH), Capped-Price Housing (CPH) and Shantytown Renovation Housing (SRH).
Rapid urbanization has the great challenge of accommodating the poor population, especially in developing countries. The world’s urban population is estimated to rise from 3.6 billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion in 2050 while 94% of the increase will occur in developing countries as mentioned UN, 2012 report. It is estimated that 828 million people from developing countries live in slums and substandard housing while the number will rise to 1.4 billion by 2020 (Al-Saadi and Abdou, 2016; Desai, 2012; Govender et al.,2011). The major problem is the accommodation of the poor people for a challenge to developing countries. Affordable housing usually refers to housing that is affordable to specified eligible households. The main target of affordable housing programs is to improve housing affordability, especially for low-income households, particularly based on government initiatives. The two major components of affordable housing programs are cost and time and the ability to meet the needs of low-income households.