Data & Tools

This dashboard provides rental housing affordability measures in charts and maps based on a selected geography (state, region, or city) and year.

Rental Affordability Snapshot

This snapshot includes a pie graph of the overall share of cost-burdened renter households in a chosen area and year and a map of the share of cost-burdened renter households by region. The map allows for easy comparison across the six states that lie fully or partially within the Atlanta Fed's Sixth District. For example, you can use the map to look at the percent of cost-burdened households in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA plus Monroe County, Florida, in 2021 to learn that 58 percent of renter households were cost-burdened.

The snapshot also includes a breakdown of the share of cost-burdened renter households by family income. Income categories are based on the area median income (AMI) displayed above the chart. Categories (extremely low income, very low income, low income, moderate income, and upper income) are defined in the "Data Definitions and Sources" section below.

Affordable and Available Rental Housing Units

In this section, you will see the estimated number of rental units that are affordable and available per 100 renter households for the geography and income category you selected. You can also see the surplus or deficit of units in each category. For example, you can look at the number of affordable and available units for renters at or below 50 percent AMI in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA plus Monroe County, Florida, in 2021 to learn that for every 100 renter households, there are only 22 rental units that are both affordable and available.

Individual Renter Demographics

This section provides the share of cost-burdened renters, rather than renter households, by race or ethnicity and by age. While the Rental Affordability Snapshot breaks down the share of cost-burdened households, demographic information such as race or ethnicity and age is measured at the individual level rather than at the household level. Thus, we calculate the share of all individuals in cost-burdened households by race or ethnicity and age.

The "Select Income Level" menu allows the user to explore these data further by the income level of the renter household. Demographic data include the share of cost-burdened renters by race or ethnicity using the census categories of (non-Hispanic) Asian, (non-Hispanic) Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and (non-Hispanic) White. For brevity, these categories are labeled Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White, respectively. The share of cost-burdened renters by age are also displayed using five age-range categories (5 or younger, 6 to 17, 18 to 34, 35 to 54, and 55 or older). This section can be used to identify vulnerable renter populations. For example, you can use these charts to find the percent of cost-burdened, low-income (80 percent AMI or below) Asian renters in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach MSA plus Monroe County, Florida, in 2021 to learn that 60 percent of low-income Asian renters are severely cost-burdened and 23 percent are cost-burdened. If the census estimate for individuals in any race or ethnicity or age category is too small to report with statistical confidence, then data are not displayed.

Data Definitions

Income categories:

• Extremely low income: A renter household for which household income was equal to or less than 30 percent of the regional AMI.
• Very low income: A renter household for which household income was more than 30 percent and equal to or less than 50 percent of the regional AMI.
• Low income: A renter household for which household income was more than 50 percent and equal to or less than 80 percent of the regional AMI.
• Moderate income: A renter household for which household income was more than 80 percent and equal to or less than 120 percent of the regional AMI.
• Upper Income: A renter household for which household incomes was more than 120 percent of the regional AMI.

Area median income (AMI): The calculated family median income within the region, provided in the Rental Affordability Snapshot. For data displayed at the state level, the AMI used varies by region. See the methodology section of "Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast" for a detailed description of how the AMIs were calculated. Please note that Fort Lauderdale and Miami-Dade plus Monroe County have since been combined to be more aligned with the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach MSA.

Cost burden:

• Cost burdened: Renter households for which gross rent was between 30 and 50 percent of the monthly household income.
• Severely cost burdened: Renter households for which gross rent was more than 50 percent of the monthly household income.
• Total cost burdened: All renter households for which gross rent was more than 30 percent of the monthly household income (the sum of cost-burdened and severely cost-burdened households).

Affordable and available rental units: A unit is considered affordable if gross rent did not exceed 30 percent of the monthly household income at the given income threshold, adjusted for number of rooms. A unit is available if it is either vacant or currently occupied by a household at or below the given income threshold. The surplus/deficit is calculated as the total number of rental units that were affordable and available at a given income level minus the total number of renter households at or below that corresponding income level. The affordable and available units per 100 renter households are calculated as the number of rental units that were affordable and available to households at or below a given income threshold per 100 households at or below that income level.

Regions: Census Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) were used to re-create cities and the metropolitan statistical areas, micropolitan areas, and nonmetropolitan areas defined as regions in this analysis. We assigned PUMAs as closely as possible to the actual boundaries of these regions; however, in some cases, the difference between the PUMA geography and the standard census geography requires either the addition or subtraction of certain counties. For details, see the Data and Methodology sections of the Atlanta Fed's Community and Economic Development paper "Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast." Please note that Fort Lauderdale and Miami-Dade plus Monroe County have since been combined to be more aligned with the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach MSA.

Data Sources

We constructed the regional snapshot of rental housing affordability and the availability of rental housing units at several scales for the Atlanta Fed's District by using the US Census Bureau's 2015 through 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS).

This tool does not include 2020 ACS data due to COVID-19 related disruptions in Census data collection. A low response rate in 2020 required using weights that are not consistent with or comparable to data from other years. Thus, the Census Bureau does not recommend users compare the 2020 “experimental” estimates with standard estimates from other years. More information about the disruption in data collection and resulting 2020 ACS one-year experimental data is available from the US Census Bureau.