Historically, the term affordability has been given a bad ‘rap’. All too often people associate the mindset that it describes a limitation to an individual’s potential growth. “Affordability” should be thought of as a simple quantified relationship between cost and risk.
Cost may further be broken down into two main subcategories - costs such as deposit, monthly rent, content insurance are generally referred to as “hard costs”, whereas utility and general maintenance (which are more easily controlled) are deemed “soft costs.”
Risk is the possibility of loss that one would forego in the chance that an individual is unable to pay (or repay) the agreed lease amount within the term or limitation set out in your provincial/regional Landlord and Tenant Legislation.