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Performance MeasureMeasure #100717776Value #103240732

UTILITY BILL AFFORDABILITY

Percent of median household income spent on utility bill

A complete source packet for this Performance Portland measure: current value, official scale, history, narrative notes, context, and links.

1

Start with value

Use the latest official value and current trend as the first read.

2

Check why it matters

Utility rates fund the City’s water, sewer, and stormwater services.

3

Use the source packet

Continue to the chart, official notes, topic links, source URLs, and full history table.

History

Official values

This chart uses the official actual values cached from ClearImpact. The latest point is highlighted; the table below preserves every raw row.

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Latest

2.43%

FY 2024 - 25

First shown

2.42%

FY 2017 - 18

Change shown

0%

Within visible history

0%25%50%75%100%FY 182.42%FY 19FY 20FY 21FY 22FY 23FY 24FY 252.43%X-axis: reporting period. Y-axis: official actual value on the ClearImpact scale.

Full source history

Every cached ClearImpact row for this measure.

PeriodActualTargetTrend
FY 2024 - 252.43%—1
FY 2023 - 242.35%—-1
FY 2022 - 232.43%—1
FY 2021 - 222.25%—0
FY 2020 - 212.25%—-1
FY 2019 - 202.40%—-1
FY 2018 - 192.44%—1
FY 2017 - 182.42%—0

Narrative Tabs

Official Performance Portland notes

Why Is This Important?

Utility rates fund the City’s water, sewer, and stormwater services. Affordability of those rates is a key consideration in determining future rate increases and balancing infrastructure needs and priorities. This measure identifies the impact of the utility bill (water, sewer, stormwater) on the median, or middle, household in the City. The median household income is the mid-point of income in the City of Portland. This is considered by the Environmental Protection Agency as a measure of the community’s ability to pay for water, sewer, and stormwater services.

What Do The Numbers Show?

This shows that the median, or middle, household in our community has paid a similar amount of their income on utilities over the past several years. The percentage has stayed roughly constant, varying between 2.2 to 2.5 percent over the past several years. This shows that the utility bill has increased at the same pace as incomes in our community. There is no standard benchmark against which this measure can be compared. The EPA has used 4.5 percent as the threshold to determine high burden and the City is below that.

How Did We Arrive at These Numbers?

The cost of an annual combined utility bill (water, sewer, stormwater) expressed as a percent of the 1-year median household income from Census American Community Survey. Median income is a good metric to understand the general community’s ability to pay for these services. However, this is not an accurate metric to determine utility bills on the poorest within our community. Generally, the City uses the 20th percentile of incomes, or the income for a household that makes less than 80 percent of the community, to measure impacts on low-income customers.