Affordability is the ability of purchasing and maintaining something on a long-term basis while remaining convenient for the beneficiary’s resources and needs (Bogdon and Can, 1997; Wu, Ross and Rhodes, 2014; Cambridge Dictionary, 2021; Oxford English Dictionary, 2021). In the context of housing, ‘Housing Affordability’ was described as "polysemous in meaning" because of the multi-factors involved within it including its life cycle costs, environmental impact, people preferences and their lifestyles (Salama, 2011; Wilson and Barton, 2018; Ezennia and Hoskara, 2019). Therefore, it has been perceived differently by several researchers based on their discipline. For instance, it is common to be considered by economists as the price to income ratio (Ezennia and Hoskara, 2019; Haidar and Bahammam, 2021). For others, housing affordability is about the household capability to balance current and future costs to access or obtain a house while maintaining other basic expenses without experiencing any financial hardship (Ezennia and Hoskara, 2019). For these definitions, housing affordability is associated with its attainability and financial sustainability.

However, housing affordability definition can be misleading if it only focusses on the monetary means of households. For the environment, housing cannot be labelled as affordable if the construction and operation will result in negative environmental impacts such as contributing to the increase of CO2 emissions (Salama, 2011; Haidar and Bahammam, 2021). Another unsustainable approach to tackle housing affordability challenges is by providing poor housing quality in terms of its building materials, design standard, location, and the surrounding facilities. In fact, this approach might increase the whole life cycle cost of housing facilities. In addition, the affordability problem is not solved if people move into deprived areas that are affordable but unhealthy and insecure which gradually will ruin their sense of belonging (Leviten-Reid, Matthew and Wardley, 2020). Therefore, housing affordability should be addressed as a mutual relationship between housing and people (Stone, 2006). Therefore, housing affordability requires an inclusive aggregation and a transdisciplinary perception of the economic, social, and environmental facets of sustainability that would influence the households (Salama, 2011; Perera, 2017; Ezennia and Hoskara, 2019).

In the end, it is worth mentioning that the linguistic origin of affordability interestingly reflects the fact that it is not only about financial aspects. The term ’afford‘ initiated from Middle English and it means "be able to bear the expense of, have enough money" to do something, which refers to the financial facet. On the other hand, the term ’ability‘ originated from Old French ableté, defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “the physical or mental power or skill needed to do something” explaining its human facet. Therefore, this reflection reassures that the affordability formula should not be only synonymous with the financial ability but also the psychological ability. Additionally, in reference to the current global challenges, the environmental ability must be included in this formula.