The Standard has been used in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington State to advocate for higher wages through living wage ordinances and in negotiating labor union agreements.
In Pennsylvania, many groups, including PathWays PA, have used the Standard to model the impact of a state Earned Income Tax Credit on the ability of a family to reach self-sufficient wages.
This paper examines the housing affordability crisis using a residual income approach to identify renter households whose housing expenses are too high and who lack the income to enable them to meet a basic but comfortable standard of living.
The Self-Sufficiency Standard provides an alternative tool to understanding housing cost burden. A recent report, Shelter Poverty in Ohio: An Alternative Analysis of Rental Housing Affordability, used the Self-Sufficiency Standard to evaluate operationalize the idea of shelter poverty by evaluating housing affordability after accounting for the minimum costs for other essentials, instead of relying solely on the widely accepted measurement for housing burden– renters paying above 30% of total income– which does not provide the full picture of housing affordability.
The 30-percent of income standard is a widely used and accepted measure of the extent of housing affordability problems across the country.
The Colorado Center on Law and Policy has used the Standard to advocate for state legislation allowing local governments to set higher local minimum wages. Employers and educational institutions have also used the Self-Sufficiency Standard to set organizational wage standards in Colorado.
The Standard was cited in research and testimony in support of the SeaTac living wage ordinance (raising wages to $15/hour for covered employees) and in the successful campaign to raise the minimum wage in Seattle to $15/hour (over several years, depending on establishment size).
In the academic journal article “Communities of Concentrated Poverty: A Proposal for Oregon,” Sara A. Chopp proposes using the Standard as a measure for evaluating poverty “hot spots” in Oregon communities.
Redefining Housing Affordability Measures: The Self-Sufficiency Standard provides an alternative tool to understanding housing cost burden. An Urban Planning thesis titled “Analyzing Measurements of Housing Affordability” found that the Self-Sufficiency Standard was the best measure of housing affordability of the six measures examined.
An evaluation of Maryland’s refugee resettlement program by the Roosevelt Institute, “Raising Refugee Voices: Promoting Participatory Refugee Resettlement Evaluation in Maryland,” used the Standard as a living wage estimate to support economic development programs and improve policies for refugees.
