Global: Housing Affordability as a Reflexivity of Quality of Life

This chapter uses housing affordability as a means to understand the dynamic nature of quality of life as a concept. It explores the way in which people utilized housing affordability as a reflexivity of their expectation for the quality of life over time and space. Based on the systematic review method, a total of 227 publications that focused on quality of life and housing affordability were reviewed rigorously to retrieve relevant information for the study. The findings of the chapter show that housing affordability is an integral part of the quality of life due to social, economic, and environmental interconnections that exist between them. However, the nature of their interconnections changes over time. Thus, quality of life is a multifaceted concept that varies across different cultures, times, and spaces as human beings are dynamic agents where thoughts and needs change frequently. Thus, quality of life is a concept that is subject to construction, negotiation, and alteration over time and space. Hence, initiatives or policies towards enhancing the quality of life of individuals should take careful attention to such dynamics in order to be more effective.