Data & Methodology

Sources

• HUD Office of Public and Indian Housing — program structure, eligibility rules, and administering-agency lists. hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs.
• HUD User Public Housing Agency (PHA) Contact Information — agency names, addresses, and program mix. huduser.gov/portal/datasets/pis.html.
• HUD User Fair Market Rents — gross rent at the 40th percentile by metro, by bedroom count. huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html.
• HUD User Income Limits — Extremely Low (30% AMI), Very Low (50% AMI), and Low (80% AMI) income limits by family size and metro. huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html.
• National Low Income Housing Coalition — state-level housing needs data. nlihc.org/housing-needs/by-state.

How figures are derived

State Area Median Income (AMI). Each state page shows the 4-person Area Median Income used to anchor that state's income limit tiers. The figures shown are state-level averages drawn from HUD's published per-metro Income Limits dataset. Real HUD limits are published per metro and per non-metro county and can be 10–25% higher in high-cost areas; we surface the metro-level FMR detail on the metro pages so you can see the variation within a state.

Income limits. The 30%, 50%, and 80% tiers shown on every state page are calculated by applying HUD's documented family-size factors (70%, 80%, 90%, 100%, 108%, 116%, 124%, and 132% of the 4-person figure for households of 1 through 8 persons) to the state-level AMI, then rounding to the nearest $50 to match HUD's published rounding convention.

Fair Market Rents. The metro pages show FMR by bedroom count using HUD's documented intra-metro structure: studios at roughly 62% of the 2-bedroom rate, 1-bedrooms at 78%, 3-bedrooms at 130%, and 4-bedrooms at 155%. The 2-bedroom anchor is the metro's published 2-BR FMR.

PHA counts and capacity. The number of PHAs per state matches HUD's published count from the Public Housing Agency Contact Information dataset. The voucher-holder and public-housing-unit estimates per state are calculated from HUD program-summary statistics: roughly 850 vouchers and 280 public housing units per PHA on a national average, scaled by the published PHA count for each state.

Caveats

The figures here should be treated as planning-grade estimates, not legal determinations. Always confirm the published current-year figure with the source dataset before applying:

• Income limits are updated each spring. The official figure for your specific metro or county is the only one that determines eligibility.
• Fair Market Rents are updated each fall. PHAs set their own Payment Standards within HUD's allowed range (90%–110% of FMR, or higher in opportunity areas under Small Area FMR rules). Your specific PHA's payment standard, not FMR, is what determines voucher value.
• PHA waiting list status changes frequently. The status flags on the PHA pages are a planning aid, not a real-time data feed.

Data refresh

The site's seed data is generated by a single PHP script (seed.php) that reads from the published HUD datasets and writes JSON to disk. Page templates read the JSON at request time and render HTML. There is no database, no JavaScript framework, and no application server beyond PHP's built-in HTTP server.

Why so simple? Because the data underlying every page is public, slow-changing, and published by HUD each year — there's no reason to build a heavy web application around it. A static-feeling, server-rendered site loads instantly, indexes cleanly in search engines, and stays maintainable for a single editor to update.