Affordable housing programs typically define “affordable” as a percentage of Area Median Income (AMI), often 80%. The assumption behind that threshold assumes the problem is supply: build enough units priced for households at 80% of AMI, and more people can afford to live there.
But what if the problem isn’t only supply? In cities with stark racial income gaps, the area median itself is part of the problem. When high white household incomes pull the median upward, the 80% threshold rises with it, pushing the benchmark well above what most Black households actually earn. In the city of Greenville, SC, white households earn nearly three times what Black households earn, a gap more extreme than almost any comparable city in the Southeast. That gap is not incidental. It reflects a history of discriminatory housing and lending policy, exclusion from wealth-building opportunities, and structural barriers that shaped which neighborhoods received public investment and which did not. Building more units at 80% AMI doesn’t deal with that fact.
A Tool for Seeing the Full Picture
The Shi research team built an interactive application that makes this distribution visible across time, going back to the 2005–2009 American Community Survey through recent years. Rather than relying on median income alone, the tool organizes households into income bands, giving users a clearer picture of where the population actually sits across the full income spectrum.
Select any two municipalities, adjust the time period, toggle between raw counts and percentages, and overlay the median income lines for Black and white households side by side. Compare Greenville to peer cities like Greensboro, Chattanooga, or Richmond to see not just how extreme the gap is today, but how persistent it has been.
Dr. Ken Kolb analyzes this dynamic in the context of place-based investment in a recent Substack post.
Why This Matters
The data make a direct argument: closing the affordability gap requires raising wages and building community wealth, not just building units. If most Black households in a city earn far less than 80% of AMI, the solution has to include investments in people: job training, paths to business ownership (including employee-owned options), education, transportation access, and wages that keep pace with rising costs.
The Shi Institute builds interactive research tools that help communities see complex problems clearly and act on what they find. Explore the income distribution tool and see what the data reveal about your community.