Housing-Affordability Wage Framework

Connecting housing affordability to wages.

The Housing Affordability Wage (HAW) Framework provides a consistent benchmark for estimating the hourly wage required to afford median one-bedroom rental housing across U.S. Congressional Districts using publicly available data and clearly defined assumptions.

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Latest Publication

HAW Framework Version 1.0

A Data-Driven Framework Using Congressional District Rental Data to Estimate Housing-Affordability Wages

Version 1.0 2026 Current publication

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21386998 Published via Zenodo

The framework provides a consistent benchmark for estimating the hourly wage needed to afford median one-bedroom gross rent across every U.S. Congressional District and the District of Columbia.

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What HAW Measures

A transparent benchmark for comparing housing affordability.

HAW translates median one-bedroom gross rent into required monthly income, annual income, and an hourly wage using a consistent 33% housing affordability threshold.

Public Data

Built from U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data.

Clear Assumptions

Every calculation and limitation is documented for review.

District Coverage

Comparable results for 435 Congressional Districts and the District of Columbia.

Supporting Files

Publication-linked datasets are available for download.

Supporting Resources

Review the work behind the publication.

The website is organized around publications. Each publication links directly to its methodology, datasets, citation information, appendices, and any revision history.

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