Map the Gap is an interactive tool that highlights the inequity between what is marketed as affordable housing and what households in lower-income neighborhoods can actually afford. Search your neighborhood to see what counts as “affordable” there and what the median household can actually pay. Then enter your own household income to see where you land.
Built entirely with public data, because the numbers behind “affordable housing” belong to the public.
Median household income vs. the regional 100% AMI line (dashed red).
Monthly rent at each AMI band vs. what the median local household can pay at the 30%-of-income standard.
The 2026 Area Median Income (AMI) for New York City for a family of three is $152,700. The city uses this figure to determine what qualifies as “affordable housing.” Rental units are deemed affordable at benchmarks such as 80% AMI ($122,160), 100% AMI ($152,700), and 130% AMI ($198,510). Under the standard used nationwide, housing is considered affordable when it costs no more than 30% of a household’s income; rents for these units are set at 30% of each band’s income ceiling, regardless of what households in the surrounding neighborhood actually earn. That benchmark closely matches incomes on the Upper West Side, where the median household earns $152,246 a year. In Mott Haven, the median household earns just $27,364.
The numbers that determine what is “affordable” to New Yorkers are not derived from income data alone. The federal government uses a rule called the High Housing Cost Adjustment: if income data alone would produce a number too low for an expensive housing market like NYC, the limit is set at whatever income makes the area’s rent look affordable, regardless of what people actually earn.
Real household income data places a family of three’s “very low income” threshold in NYC at $46,900. HUD’s published figure is $76,350 — 63% higher. Every other band used to determine a household’s income status (30%, 80%, 100%, 130% AMI) is built by multiplying up from that inflated base. HUD frames this as making affordable housing programs possible in expensive cities. But the mechanism runs backward: it asks what income would make the current rent look affordable, rather than what rent people can actually afford based on their income.
The result is a benchmark that rises when rent gets more expensive, whether or not wages rise to match. “Affordable” isn’t only detached from what your neighborhood earns — it’s calculated from what your landlord already charges.
Mayor Mamdani’s Block by Block housing plan commits to building 200,000 new affordable homes over the next decade. The expanded budget grows new building by 35%, producing around 8,000 new homes per year.
For whom these homes are being built matters more than the total number. Of the 8,000 annual new homes, 30% are reserved for households earning under 30% of AMI ($42,000 or less for a family of four) and an additional 20% are reserved for families earning between 31–50% of AMI. The plan also changes the rent formula for the lowest-income families: households without vouchers earning under 30% of AMI will pay 25% of their income rather than the standard 30%.
The plan’s committed allocation of ~8,000 subsidized homes per year.
Measured against the data shown on this site, this allocation is a real shift toward the neighborhoods the map shows in dark red, such as Mott Haven, Brownsville, and East Harlem.
However, the AMI benchmark used to mark affordable housing misrepresents both low-income neighborhoods and the city as a whole. NYC’s actual citywide median household income is $83,970, just 55% of the $152,700 figure used to price affordable housing. The AMI runs high because it includes Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties and is inflated further by the federal government’s calculation adjustments. As a result, at the 30%-of-income standard, the median NYC household can afford about $2,099 a month. Only units priced at roughly 50% AMI and below are genuinely affordable to the typical household in the city. Half of everything built above that line is affordable to the city on paper, but out of reach in reality.
Map the Gap was designed by Theodore Spohngellert, a public administration graduate student at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, public policy professional, and lifelong New Yorker. His work and research focuses on housing policy, harm reduction, and criminal justice reform.