Most national analyses of affordability utilize a small sample of utilities or make generalized assumptions about expenditures. With more than 3,000 utilities in our pricing database, the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is uniquely positioned to conduct detailed analyses of affordability using multiple metrics. Historically, the most common method of presenting affordability metrics for a specific water utility is to calculate the percent of the median household income of a community that goes to pay for water and/or wastewater services on an annual basis. This metric, often presented in shorthand as percent MHI, Continue reading