The main research purpose of this paper is to acquire a series of designed concept of “affordable housing” in key geographical areas of East China through the development of innovative, economical, flexible, reproducible and affordable residential houses using intensive steel solutions. Toward this goal, both the residential housing conditions and the development of steel residential building in China are widely investigated. Affordable housing in China is then, based on the investigation, defined as green humanized multi-storey housing comprised of medium-small type dwellings whose construction cost is not much higher than that of traditional reinforced concrete buildings and the maintenance cost is low. Taking this definition as a guiding ideology, detailed architectural and structural design of a steel affordable housing model in terms of a collective housing form with repeatable living units has been carried out. Comparisons of project cost and energy consumption between the designed steel residential housing and the corresponding reinforced concrete building show that the former is not more expensive and consumes less energy than the latter.