What is the Housing Affordability Wage?

The HAW is a benchmark estimating the hourly wage required to afford median one-bedroom gross rent under the framework’s stated assumptions.

Why use one-bedroom apartments?

A one-bedroom unit provides a consistent and widely available housing measure without requiring assumptions about household size.

Why use Congressional Districts?

Congressional Districts provide a consistent federal geography tied to a single representative and permit comparisons across the country.

Why use a 33% affordability threshold?

The framework uses 33% of gross income as a transparent working assumption while acknowledging the commonly used 30% housing-cost burden benchmark.

How often will the framework be updated?

Future editions are intended to use the latest available American Community Survey five-year estimates and clearly identify the dataset vintage.

Where can I find the supporting data?

Datasets are associated with the publication they support and are available through the Publications and Resources sections.