Can anyone explain housing budgets?

[TazmanianD]

I know that changing the housing budget changes the efficiency and thus the housing quality of a residence which affects the housing happiness of your citizens, but beyond that, I can't see any other affect and there doesn't seem to be a lot of clarity on this in various forums.

In Tropico 5, the budget would affect both the wealth requirements for the house as well as the income generated but neither seems to be true in Tropico 6. If you change the budget, the wealth requirement stays the same and the monthly income doesn't change either.

So if you don't care about housing happiness, why would you ever set the budgets to anything above the minimum?

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by TazmanianD:

So if you don't care about housing happiness, why would you ever set the budgets to anything above the minimum?

Budget directly effects housing quality, housing quality directly effects happiness and thus approval ratings

There's rarely a reason to go above the default (unless you need a temporary boost during the year before an election, or you just happen to be super wealthy), but if you were going to try and lower the budget to save money, you might as well have not bought any new/upgraded housing at all and leave everyone in the cheapest building or even in shacks (and just deal with the rebels that will cause)

[TazmanianD]

Originally posted by Aturchomicz:

Why would you deliberately want to have a lower aproval raiting, what??

You generally wouldn't but if you're not running for an election, approval doesn't seem as important but the upkeep costs can. I saved a game, ran it for a few months then reloaded and switched from the max to the min budgets on all the residences and the resulting difference on my final treasury amount was pretty significant.

[TazmanianD]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

you might as well have not bought any new/upgraded housing at all and leave everyone in the cheapest building or even in shacks

Except that better houses do provide more income per family.