Over the years, government, individuals and agencies both locally and internationally have embarked on several housing intervention programmes with the objective of making housing available and affordable to the majority of the population. Despite those efforts; housing problems particularly shortage and affordability still persist in Kampala and Uganda as a whole. The purpose of the study was to explore the low income residents preferences and affordability of homes for their families in the poor suburbs of Kampala.

The researchers adopted the exploratory, cross sectional and quantitative research designs in this study. The unit of analysis consists of Households and the unit of inquiry included household heads (Parents) and youths (singles living alone). Primary data was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The data was collected through five point scale questionnaire survey, coded using Epi Data and analyzed using SPSS.

Findings revealed that 70.8 % of the salary earned by individuals was spent on rent thus a very high level of housing stress.Futhermore security; privacy and accessibility were considered important in finding a home to rent or buy.