Title
Authorizing the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development, and the Homeless to hold hearings on how setting affordable housing program eligibility according to the metric of regional Area Median Income (AMI) fails to reflect the true state of housing affordability needs of Philadelphians, how this leads to City housing programs not providing enough funding to those who need it most, and how the adoption of a more locally defined AMI can be utilized to create and sustain genuinely affordable housing across the City of Philadelphia.
Body
WHEREAS, The metric known as Area Median Income (AMI) is calculated annually by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is used to establish eligibility for federal, state, and local housing and community development programs in Philadelphia and across the country; and
WHEREAS, HUD's methodology of calculating AMI for large cities such as Philadelphia uses the midpoint of incomes for the entire population of Philadelphia as well as the ten nearby counties that comprise the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metropolitan Area; and
WHEREAS, Philadelphia has more residents with lower incomes than nearby suburban counties, which is quite common for other large cities that are the center of a major metropolitan area; and
WHEREAS, Setting AMI according to a region where there are more people in suburban communities with higher incomes than those in the central City leads to the regional AMI being higher than the average income of City dwellers and affordability standards that do not accurately reflect the income distribution of Philadelphia households; and
WHEREAS, The 2024 regional AMI for a family of four is $114,400, while the 2024 median household income for a similarly sized family in Philadelphia is roughly $87,000; and
WHEREAS, Every county part of the surrounding metropolitan area has a higher AMI than Philadelphia, with two counties (Chester and Montgomery) having median family in...
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