Identifying preferences of apartment dwellers: a case study in Michigan, USA

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the current affordable apartment dwelling quality attributes, and the preferences of eastern Michigan's urban young and poor, with a view to making recommendations for improvement based on findings. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected through the questionnaire instrument administered to a representative sample of 32 apartment dwellers. Some ordinal ranking scales were developed and treated in a quantitative manner by assigning ordered Likert scores to them, while others were measured using ratio scales. Spearman rho's correlation and Kruskal–WallisHtest were conducted on the data. Findings - Among the key conclusions, it was observed that the choice to dwell in an apartment may be simply deliberate and a real preference, and not necessarily connected with income, gender or age. The overwhelmingly majority of apartment occupants rejected to pay more for environmentally sustainable apartments. Research limitations/implications - It is acknowledged that the design of the study, the sample size and statistical methodologies will necessarily limit the accuracy of the results and conclusions based on them. However, they are appropriate and adequate for this level of study. Besides increasing the sample size, further analysis and interpretation of the results are required in future explorations of this research in order to achieve focused and definitive conclusions. Practical implications - The findings have practical implications for future choices while designing and building apartments that satisfy the health, safety and welfare (HSW) needs of the occupants. Overall, this understanding if implemented may help reduce the rate of turnover among apartment dwellers engendered by dissatisfaction occupants have towards their apartments. At the basic level, this research can initiate a re‐think that would encourage stakeholders to embrace the concept of more suitable, HSW quality‐focused apartments, on realizing and recognizing apartment aspects that most appeal to the urban young and poor who make up a significant proportion of the US population and workforce. This research has the potential to make a significant national impact on the US HSW debate, as it addresses a key stipulation of the Federal housing policy objectives – the Cranston‐Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (1990/1998). Originality/value - This research uncovers salient aspects of apartment that influence the rate of turnover among dwellers engendered by their dissatisfaction with certain apartment features. It reveals apartment aspects that appeal to its urban young and poor occupants.