Calculating Area Median Income (AMI) for polygon layer

Question

I work for Habitat for Humanity, and we have a polygon layer that shows the Geographic Service Areas of all of our affiliates across the United States.  I have been asked to see if I can find the Area Median Income (AMI) of each affiliate, along with number of households and Median Household Income.  I used the Enrich tool in ArcPro, and was able to get the number of households and household median income, but i could not find how to get the AMI.  I could have sworn there was a field in the Census data and ACS surveys, but  I can't find it anywhere.  I'm not overly experienced with Census data other than adding a few feature services to our applications in portal and AGOL.  Can anyone help out on where to find this data?  and if it doesn't exist, is there some way to calculate it in ArcPro?

Just a note, our affiliates have varying geographies, from counties, cities and zip codes all the way down to school districts and buffers around certain intersections

Thank you in advance for any advice/tips/instructions on how to do this!

Robert_LeClair · Answer

In the ACS 5-year or Esri estimates, there is an enriched "Median Household Income" field.  In ArcGIS Pro, I also went to the Catalog Pane, clicked the Portal tab, and then clicked the ArcGIS Online cloud.  I then searched for "Median Household Income" and there were many results.  I added the "Median Household Income 2025 - Esri Demographics" web map to ArcGIS Pro.  It's very detailed.  Further, there is an ACS Median Household Income (latest) feature layer that I added to the map as well.  It does down the Census Tract level.  Not sure how it corresponds to the AMI from HUD but it's a good source to consider.

VenkataKondepati · Answer

Hi @DanaBissey1,

It is challenging to obtain AMI because AMI (Area Median Income) isn't a Census Bureau product. It is a metric calculated by HUD. While the Census gives us raw "Median Household Income," HUD takes that data, tweaks it for family size and regional costs, and releases it as its own dataset.

You can download Section 8 Income Limits from the portal below.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html

In ArcGIS Pro, join that Excel sheet to a County layer using the FIPS code. This gives you the official AMI for every county.

If you just need a ballpark "Habitat style" eligibility number in your attribute table, you can create a new field and use a simple expression:

80% AMI:

!Median_Family_Income! * 0.8

50% AMI:

!Median_Family_Income! * 0.5