The affordability of a house can be evaluated in different ways that lead to very different conclusions as to the nature of the problem is the best solution. In the recent past, affordability was often defined as households spending less than 30% of their budgets on rents or mortgages but households often make trade-offs between housing and transportation costs. But now it is recommended evaluating affordability based on lower-income households’ ability to spend less than 45% of their budgets on housing and transport combined and it is recognized that a cheap house is not really affordable if it has high operating or transport expenses and households can afford to spend more for efficient housing located in accessible and multi-modal neighborhoods where operating and transport costs are low.