Criteria of rental housing choices according to family structures in Dhaka city

Abstract

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh is facing high urbanization rate and acute housing crisis. Most of the middle.income households do Tlotown their house, and they live into rented houses. Several factors influence the decisions for choosing residential area and a rentat'housc in a locality by the middle-income families and it varies with respect of the family structures. 'fhe dwellers make some negotiations among the cboices regarding selection of location and type of house. The objective of the study is to address the relatively importance of rental house locations and a rental apartments choice criteria by the middle-income dwellers by applying Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The study attempts to dctcnnine the relative weight of selected variables on the basis of elicitation through. questionnaire survey of three types of middle-income single families: type A- having no school going children, type B- having school going children and type C- having children who arc {)ldcr than school going age. The study reveals that all types of middle.income families give priority to proximity to workplace for selecting present apartment location; it is high for family type A. The families type B prefer eloseness to sehool equally to the distance to workplace. Then comes the importance of distance to market that is slightly more important than distance to bus stop to all of the family types. These families evaluate more the , physical attributes like planning of neighborhood, municipal service, and road width compared to social attributes. Proximity to open area finds least importance to all of the family types. The residents are hardly satisfied completely with the housing environment. The diftcrence of the comparative importance of the variables for selecting the existing apartment location verses the preferred apartment location is predominant for planning ofncighborhood and municipal faciiities. All of the family types evaluated the factor affordability mostly for apartment selection, since, family type B consider it most important. Utility services get the second priority and number of bedrO()mget the third rank, Number of be<Jroomhas relatively more importance to the families that have higher household size. All orthe target families have compromised the qualities of utility services and availability of air and sunlight to attain other apartment qualities in the present apartment.