The California Housing Partnership (Partnership) regularly publishes the “Who Can Afford to Rent” policy brief to give a snapshot of affordability in California and provide recommendations to policymakers on how to best address the pressing housing needs of the state’s lowest income renters. This year, for the first time, we also published the “Where Can You Afford to Rent in 2025?” interactive online tool as a supplement to show users a more granular and realistic understanding of affordability in their communities and across the state.
Most affordable housing programs rely on area median income (AMI) to define income level—80% of AMI is considered “low-income”—which is why we use AMI to define affordability in our brief. However, AMIs differ widely across the state, meaning a “low-income” household can look very different depending on what county they live in. Our policy brief is necessarily limited to discussing whether a household already living in a particular county can afford rents in that county. This new tool provides insight on whether any household could afford to move to a given neighborhood anywhere in the state.
To better understand the variability of AMI take, for example, a low-income household living in San Francisco County and one living in Riverside County. When adjusting to a two-bedroom home, the San Francisco household earns up to $133,704 annually while the Riverside household only earns up to $74,808 annually. Further, the San Francisco household can afford a monthly rent of $3,342.60 and the Riverside household can only afford $1,870.20.[1] Although neither low-income household can afford San Francisco’s average two-bedroom asking rent of $3,962,[2] the low-income San Francisco-based household only needs a 19% income increase to afford rent compared to the 112% percent income increase the low-income Riverside-based household needs in order to afford the move to San Francisco.
Our tool addresses the uneven distribution of incomes across the state and provides a more comprehensive understanding of affordability by letting users input their household income to determine which zip codes they can or cannot afford, as well as how much more they would need to make to afford the average two-bedroom asking rent. As shown in Figure 1 below, in the orange and red map sections, the typical low-income Californian household (a household making $69,360 annually)[3] would find it nearly impossible to afford the average rent in most neighborhoods in the Bay Area, Los Angeles County, and the southern Californian coast through San Diego.
It is our hope that this new tool can provide useful insights into the relative affordability of California’s neighborhoods, both for those households trying to stay in a county and for those planning to move to a new region. This tool also demonstrates the nuances of affordability beyond AMI, something policymakers should keep in mind when considering the needs of the state’s lowest income renters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Matt Alvarez-Nissen is a Research Manager at the Partnership. He supports the Partnership’s policy and research efforts through data analysis and program evaluation as well as regional work with local governments and statewide academic/research partners. |
[1] “Affordability” is defined as a household paying up to 30% of the annual income towards rent. For more on the methodology used in the “Who Can Afford to Rent” policy brief, see here.
[2] Based on California Housing Partnership analysis of data from CoStar Group, September 2025.
[3] See the methodology for more information on how the household annual income of the typical low-income Californian household was calculated.