Amid the ever rising cost of living in California, a new report from the state has reassessed what it considers low income in San Joaquin County.
The threshold, set by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development, matters when it comes to landing an affordable place to live.
If you’re a single person in San Joaquin County making no more than $58,600 a year or a family of four earning $83,700 annually, you qualify as low income, according to the latest data.
The department resets income levels every year in order to determine eligibility for state and local subsidized housing programs. The process is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of the public housing and Section 8 programs.
This year’s levels are up about 8.5% from the 2024 numbers, when low income was considered $54,000 for single people in the county and $77,100 for a family of four.
Income thresholds vary across California’s 58 counties based on median income. Nearly half of the state’s counties have higher limits than San Joaquin County — and some are far more.
In San Francisco County, for instance, the low-income threshold is $109,700 for a single person and $156,650 for a family of four. The low income level also topped six figures in Marin, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties for single people.
Being deemed low income in San Joaquin County does not put an earner in the state’s lowest category, however. Those whose income is considered “acutely low” in the county earn $11,000 or less a year. There are also categories for “extremely low,” at $22,000, and “very low,” which is $36,650 locally this year.
The income limits can affect how much renters pay for assisted housing.
“Typically, rents for assisted housing units will be set based on the household income so that an extremely low income household would pay less in rent than a very low income household,” department spokesperson Alicia Murillo told Stocktonia. The goal is to try to get housing for each person or family that carves out a similar percentage of their income.
Qualifying as low income also does not guarantee a person a place to live.
“In many cases, housing programs do not have available resources to assist all eligible applicants,” Murillo wrote in an email.
“Some programs will offer priority for households that are in the lowest income categories while others will make assisted units available to households within a specific income category for which particular units are designated as those units become available.”