Access as a determinant variable in the residential location choice of low-income households in Bogotá

Abstract

Abstract Providing adequate, conveniently located social housing (SH) is one of the main challenges that developing cities face nowadays. This research aims to provide evidence showing how low-income households value different attributes and their trade-offs when locating in the city of Bogota and how different location options may bring different benefits from households’ point of view. Accordingly, several location choice models based on revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) surveys were estimated. Regarding the RP models, the utility related to their settlement was calculated considering travel time and costs, quality and housing cost, based on households’ current location and alternative location options. In the case of the SP models, a survey presenting different location scenarios, including travel time, house size and house rent, was applied. Analyses were conducted for two income groups, with poor and very poor income levels. For the RP models, the projects with the shorter travel time, located city center or close to employment centers, show higher utilities, while outskirts locations reveal the lowest. Meanwhile, the SP models present a higher degree of sensitivity towards the housing cost, especially for the very poor model, making the most attractive projects the ones with lower monthly housing expenditure, even though the travel time still weighs in the poor-household models. Nonetheless, in all the analyses, there is a disjunction between location attractiveness and housing costs. These costs arise as an important factor for low-income households because of the proportion of the monthly income that they represent. When comparing poor and very poor households, the former group has greater willingness to pay for better locations and living conditions, while the latter is highly sensible to costs. In particular, special attention must be paid to accessibility, as improvements in transport systems and better distribution of employment may translate into better conditions when locating future SH projects.