All Aboard Planning

Housing and community development

Affordability and cost burden, area median income, LIHTC and vouchers, CDBG, fair housing, fair share, missing middle and manufactured housing, rent regulation, and displacement.

Lesson 31 of 40 · about 38 minutes

Learning objectives

  • Apply the cost-burden standard and HUD's area median income categories.
  • Describe the parts of a housing needs assessment.
  • Explain how LIHTC, Housing Choice Vouchers, CDBG, HOME, and Housing First work.
  • Summarize the Fair Housing Act, affirmatively furthering fair housing, and the key cases (Inclusive Communities, Edmonds, Mount Laurel).
  • Use supply, preservation, and tenant-protection tools, including missing middle housing, ADUs, and manufactured housing, to address affordability and displacement.
  • Distinguish rent control from rent stabilization and weigh their tradeoffs.

Key concepts

Measuring affordability

The most widely used planning measure: a household is cost-burdened when it pays more than 30% of gross income for housing costs, and severely cost-burdened above 50%. Housing costs include rent plus utilities for renters, and mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and utilities for owners. See Implementation math for worked calculations.

Area median income (AMI) anchors most affordability programs. HUD publishes income limits for each area, adjusted for household size:

Category Income
Extremely low income At or below 30% of AMI
Very low income At or below 50% of AMI
Low income At or below 80% of AMI
Moderate income Commonly 80–120% of AMI (defined locally or by program)
A bar of household income as a share of area median income (AMI). Extremely low runs to 30%, very low to 50%, low to 80%, and moderate from 80 to 120% (dashed, because each program sets it). If the area median is $100,000 (illustrative), the lines fall at $30k, $50k, $80k, and $100k at the median.
Each category is a ceiling, not a band of its own: a household at 25% of AMI also counts as very low and low income.Tap the figure to open it full size.

7 more sections follow in the full lesson.

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