This is how the government decides what housing is ‘affordable’

“Area median income is problematic, but it’s probably the best thing that we have,” said Will White, director of the Hawaiʻi Budget and Policy Center. “Because we live in a society that has such extreme income inequality, you’re going to have these very high-income folks and very low-income folks that are just going to skew where that median lies.”

After a surge of out-of-state homebuyers and remote tech workers with high salaries descended on Maui during the pandemic, some housing advocates are concerned that the community’s median income will rise, eventually driving up income limits for affordable housing, too. Some of Maui’s elected officials, including council member Gabe Johnson, chair of the affordable housing committee, have vowed to closely examine what the county deems “affordable” in the months to come.

Andrew Aurand, a researcher for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said it’s a problem that communities across the U.S. have grappled with any time that the median income rises faster than wages for low-wage workers or anyone relying on a fixed source of income.

“The higher the median income, the higher the income limits and the higher the rent can be,” Aurand said. “But if you’re on a fixed income, like social security or disability, you’re still really struggling to pay that so-called affordable rent.”