Cost Burdened

Cost burdened is the closest thing to an official house poor line. HUD’s Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) definitions, the framework behind most published housing affordability statistics, count a household as cost burdened when monthly housing costs exceed 30 percent of monthly income, and severely cost burdened above 50 percent.

Two details make the definition sharper than the folk version. It is measured on gross income, the same basis lenders use, and it includes utilities in housing costs, which lender ratios do not. That second detail is why a payment that passes underwriting can still leave a household cost burdened once the full stack of ownership costs is counted.