Top 10 US Metros by Highest Section 8 Payment Standards
PlainVoucher ranks metro Fair Market Rent areas by the HUD-published 2-bedroom payment standard.
Research period:
Research question
Across the 400 metro Fair Market Rent areas tracked, which metros carry the highest HUD 2-bedroom Section 8 payment standards, and what does the cluster of California Bay Area, coastal Massachusetts, and Hawaii metros reveal about voucher purchasing power in the nation's most expensive rental markets?
Methodology
This ranking is generated automatically from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research's published dataset and reflects the most recently reported figures for each entity. The page updates whenever we refresh our copy of the source data, so the numbers always match the latest release we have ingested.
Coverage and exclusions: entities with no reported value for this metric are left out of the ranking rather than shown as zero, since a missing figure is not the same as an actual zero. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research occasionally withholds a value for confidentiality, small-sample, or quality-control reasons, and those withheld entries are excluded the same way.
Data provenance: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research publishes this dataset on its own release schedule, and we pull each new release as it becomes publicly available. If a later release revises a prior figure, the revised number will appear here automatically the next time we refresh our copy, no part of this page is hand-edited.
Editorial governance: PlainVoucher maintains an editorial standards process covering how rankings are built, how outliers are handled, and how corrections are processed if an entity disputes a figure attributed to it. A named editor reviews this page before publication, shown in the byline above. Corrections and clarifications can be requested through the contact channels linked in the site footer.
Transparency: every number on this page traces back to a specific U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research source record, linked from the entity pages reachable from this ranking. See our methodology page for the full source list, update cadence, and how each figure is derived.
See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
Top 10 US Metros by Highest Section 8 Payment Standards
Live data, updated automatically whenever we refresh our copy of the source
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the most recent data we have on file. Refresh the page after we update our copy of the source to see the latest values.
| # | FMR area | Studio ($) | 1 BR ($) | 2 BR ($) | 3 BR ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA MSA | $3,056 | $3,221 | $4,223 | $5,256 |
| 2 | San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA HUD Metro FMR Area | $2,608 | $2,975 | $3,446 | $4,477 |
| 3 | San Francisco, CA HUD Metro FMR Area | $2,275 | $2,780 | $3,318 | $4,138 |
| 4 | Salinas, CA MSA | $2,414 | $2,479 | $2,982 | $4,025 |
| 5 | Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA HUD Metro FMR Area | $2,352 | $2,454 | $2,903 | $3,927 |
| 6 | San Diego-Carlsbad, CA MSA | $2,145 | $2,328 | $2,881 | $3,852 |
| 7 | Nantucket County, MA | $2,298 | $2,436 | $2,842 | $3,424 |
| 8 | Napa, CA MSA | $1,915 | $2,128 | $2,792 | $3,636 |
| 9 | Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area | $2,163 | $2,288 | $2,711 | $3,266 |
| 10 | Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA MSA | $2,097 | $2,386 | $2,695 | $3,597 |
Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD Fair Market Rents and Small Area Fair Market Rents payment standards database. Values reflect our most recent copy of the source data. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD Fair Market Rents and Small Area Fair Market Rents payment standards database. Values reflect our most recent copy of the source data.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA MSA, with a value of $4,223 on the 2 BR ($) column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record ($4,223) and the 10th-ranked record ($2,695) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, specifically the HUD Fair Market Rents and Small Area Fair Market Rents payment standards database. PlainVoucher ingests the source vintage published by the agency and republishes it here in a clear, browsable format. Every page reflects our most recent copy of the data, there is no stale cached export, and an update from the source agency propagates to this page within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how each figure is derived.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Payment standards are HUD-published Fair Market Rent (FMR) figures or PHA-adopted local payment standards for the listed Fair Market Rent area, expressed in monthly US dollars. The 2-bedroom standard is the most commonly used reference because it represents the typical voucher household-size mid-point. Payment standards represent the maximum subsidy contribution HUD allows for a voucher unit; actual contract rent paid by the PHA to the landlord on behalf of a voucher tenant cannot exceed this standard for the given bedroom size. Tenants are responsible for the difference between contract rent and the household's 30% adjusted-income share, plus any rent above the payment standard that the household chooses to assume. HUD adjusts payment standards annually based on local rental-market data; Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) apply to specific metros and refine the standard down to the ZIP-code level rather than the metro-wide average. California Bay Area metros, Hawaii Honolulu metro, coastal Massachusetts, and select Colorado mountain-resort areas dominate the ranking because their underlying rental markets carry the highest median rents in the country. High payment standards do not guarantee voucher-holder rental success, landlord acceptance, unit-availability search timelines, and source-of-income discrimination protections (variable by state) all affect lease-up outcomes. Figures reflect the most recent published year in the dataset; HUD refreshes payment standards on an annual cycle.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 FMR areas by HUD studio-unit payment standard
Sources
- HUD, Fair Market Rents (FMR) database - https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html
- HUD, Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMR) program - https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr/smallarea/index.html