# Affordability exhibits

URL: https://municorn.us/build/affordability-exhibits/
Updated: 2026-09-08
Tags: build, affordability

> **Cite as:** Municorn.us, "Affordability exhibits", Municorn water loss index, https://municorn.us/build/affordability-exhibits/ (source filings retrieved 2026-09-08).
> **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — reuse and redistribution are permitted with attribution to Municorn.us and a link to this URL.
> **Caveat that must travel with these figures:** "Water loss" is at least three different quantities depending on the jurisdiction, and nothing here supports a comparison between states.

Household income and demographics joined to a service area, from the published census tables, with the join written down so the exhibit can be defended rather than only presented.

## What it is

The affordability exhibit that appears in most rate studies: median household income for the service area, the bill at representative usage, and the bill as a share of income, at whatever geography the study needs.

An affordability exhibit is a division that takes a minute. What takes the afternoon is deciding which census geographies make up a service area, and what to do where a boundary cuts a tract in half. That decision gets written down, so the exhibit can be defended when somebody asks.

## What you hand us

Your service area boundary, and the bill at each usage level under the current and proposed schedules. If you do not have a boundary as data, say so early — that is often the longest part of the work.

## What you get back

A table at tract, place or system level, the bill as a share of income at each, and a note recording how the boundary was matched to geography and what was done where it did not line up.

## What it is built from

The Census Bureau's published American Community Survey tables, pulled for the engagement. To be plain about it: household income is **not** part of this corpus and is not something we hold or archive. It is public, we pull it, and the exhibit says which table and which vintage it came from.

## What it does not do

It does not tell you what is affordable. Affordability thresholds are contested, they differ by state and by program, and the exhibit reports a ratio rather than a verdict.

It does not survey anybody. It is published data joined to a boundary, which means it describes the area and not your customers.

It does not resolve a boundary we cannot get. Where a service area has no published boundary, we say the geography could not be established rather than approximating it with a city limit.

_Municorn.us · https://municorn.us/build/affordability-exhibits/ · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ · source filings retrieved 2026-09-08_

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