The data we use to develop our local housing needs information sheets is all publicly available. Check out the sources below:
- Supplemental Security Income
- Retirement benefits
- Veterans’ pension: We use data from Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs.
- Area median income: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Area Median Income calculation. You’ll need to select “Oregon”, and then select each of the 36 Oregon counties individually. Oregon Housing and Community Services also maintains a page of the income limits in every county.
- For the data points “Mean Renter Wage”, “Income Needed to Afford Fair Market Rent”, “Number of Hours at Minimum Wage needed to Afford Fair Market Rent”, “Fair Market Rent”, and “Housing Wage”, we used the NLIHC Out of Reach Report. You can download an excel table with a lot of great data in it for every state and county.
- Students experiencing homelessness: Oregon Department of Education provides data every year on students who experience homelessness by district.
- Affordable housing shortage and renter cost burden data was prepared by NLIHC: http://nlihc.org/gap. We used their data by county, which is available by request.
- Wages by occupation: regional wage data by occupation from the State of Oregon Employment Department (click on the “Local Areas” tab for regional data). We selected a range of occupations for current data.
- Homeownership: We used Zillow to calculate an affordable homeownership price, using a $10,000 down payment, 30-year fixed mortgage and assuming no other debts. We assumed a 36% debt to income ratio. We also used Zillow to identify the average home price in every county in Oregon.