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

The Housing-Affordability Wage (HAW) Framework provides a standardized, transparent, and reproducible methodology for estimating the hourly wage required to afford the median one-bedroom rental unit while keeping housing costs at or below one-third of gross income.

Version 1.0 applies the framework to all United States Congressional Districts using publicly available American Community Survey (ACS) 2020–2024 Five-Year Estimates (Detailed Table B25031). The publication includes the complete methodology, supporting analysis, figures, appendices, and accompanying datasets.

The HAW Framework is intended as a measurement framework rather than a policy recommendation. It is designed to facilitate consistent comparisons of housing affordability across geographic regions while allowing future updates using subsequent ACS releases.

This release package contains:

• HAW Framework Version 1.0 (PDF)

• Microsoft Word source document

• Congressional District dataset

• State summary dataset

• Territorial dataset

• Supporting figures

• Documentation and citation information