Low-Income Senior Apartments 2026: Section 202 Who Qualifies

If you are 62 or older and looking up “senior apartments based on income,” you are looking for one of about 11,000 buildings. HUD’s own file of assisted multifamily properties that primarily serve elderly residents holds 11,012 properties and 710,387 assisted units, and the biggest single federal program behind them is Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly.

This guide is built around two things you cannot get from a brochure: a self-check against the actual eligibility rules, and a state-by-state table of the 2026 income limits with the number of these buildings in your state. Everything below comes from the regulation text, the statute, or HUD’s own published data — and where the folklore and the rule disagree, we say so.

The Short Answer

Question	The rule	Where it comes from
Age	One household member aged 62 or older, measured at move-in	12 U.S.C. 1701q(k)(1); 24 CFR 891.205
Income	Very low income — 50% of area median, set county by county	42 U.S.C. 1437a(b)(2)(B); 24 CFR 891.410(c)(1)
Rent	The highest of 30% of adjusted monthly income or 10% of monthly income	12 U.S.C. 1701q(c)(3); 24 CFR 5.628
Deposit	One month’s tenant rent or $50, whichever is greater	24 CFR 891.435(a)
Assets	The $100,000 cap in 24 CFR 5.618 is written for Section 8 and public housing, not this program	24 CFR 5.601(e); 24 CFR 5.618(e)
Care level	Apartments, not care. No infirmaries, nursing stations, or overnight care allowed	24 CFR 891.220

Do You Qualify? A Seven-Question Self-Check

Work through these in order. A “no” on questions 1 through 4 is disqualifying; the rest change what you should ask, not whether you can apply.

1. Is at least one person in the household 62 or older?

Not everyone. One. The definition in 24 CFR 891.205, repeated word for word in the statute at 12 U.S.C. 1701q(k)(1), is:

“Elderly person means a household composed of one or more persons at least one of whom is 62 years of age or more at the time of initial occupancy.”

Two things follow from that sentence that people routinely get wrong. The unit of measurement is the household, so a 63-year-old and a 58-year-old spouse are one qualifying household. And the moment of measurement is initial occupancy — the age test is applied when you move in.

2. Is your income at or below the very low-income limit for your county?

24 CFR 891.410(c)(1) requires an applicant to “be a very low-income family,” and 42 U.S.C. 1437a(b)(2)(B) defines that as income not exceeding “50 per centum of the median family income for the area.” There is no national dollar figure. See the table further down for your state’s range, and look up your own county at HUD’s income limits page.

3. Can you handle the activities of daily living, with help?

24 CFR 891.205 spells out what “activities of daily living” means here, and the standard is lower than most people assume. On eating you “May need assistance with cooking, preparing, or serving food, but must be able to feed self.” On bathing you “May need assistance in getting in and out of the shower or tub, but must be able to wash self.” On dressing you “Must be able to dress self, but may need occasional assistance.” On home management you may need help with housework, shopping, laundry and getting to appointments, “but must be mobile” — and the rule adds, in the same sentence, that “The mobility requirement does not exclude persons in wheelchairs or those requiring mobility devices.”

4. Will this be your only federal housing subsidy?

24 CFR 891.415(b)(2) bars a household from receiving assistance here “while occupying, or receiving assistance for the occupancy of, another unit assisted under any Federal housing assistance program, including any section 8 program.” You cannot stack this on a Housing Choice Voucher or a public housing unit. Same section requires the apartment to be your “principal place of residence.”

5. Do you have savings, an IRA, or a house?

Here is where the common advice is wrong often enough to be worth reading twice. The famous $100,000 net-asset ceiling and the rule against owning a home you could live in are in 24 CFR 5.618 — and that section ends with paragraph (e): “This section applies to the Section 8 (tenant-based and project-based) and public housing programs.” 24 CFR 5.601(e) says the same thing from the other direction. Section 202 is not named in either.

That does not make assets irrelevant. Income produced by assets counts as annual income, and 24 CFR 891.415(a)(2) requires you to supply “any certification of family net assets.” But when you are told flatly that savings disqualify you, ask which rule is being applied, and note that 24 CFR 5.603 excludes from net family assets “the value of any account under a retirement plan recognized as such by the Internal Revenue Service, including individual retirement arrangements (IRAs).”

6. Do you need someone to live with you to help?

A live-in aide is defined at 24 CFR 5.403 as someone essential to your care who “would not be living in the unit except to provide the necessary supportive services,” and 24 CFR 5.609(b)(8) excludes “Income of a live-in aide” from annual income. That aide’s earnings do not push you over the income limit.

7. Do you have unreimbursed medical costs?

They lower your rent, but only above a threshold — and the threshold changed. See the rent section below; this is the single largest lever most applicants have.

The Income Limit Is Not a National Number

HUD publishes the limits county by county. The FY 2026 limits took effect May 1, 2026, and HUD’s own page confirms they are the limits that “determine eligibility for assisted housing programs including… Section 202 housing for the elderly.”

We pulled HUD’s FY 2026 Section 8 Income Limits spreadsheet and computed the spread. Across the 2,657 income-limit areas in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the one-person very low-income limit for 2026 runs from $23,300 (Santa Cruz County, Arizona) to $76,150 (the Santa Cruz–Watsonville, California metro area) — a 3.3-fold spread under one 50-percent rule. The middle area is $31,500. Nine hundred ninety-two areas, 37% of them, sit below $30,000; 53 areas sit above $50,000.

So “am I low income enough” has no general answer. It has a county answer.

State by State: 2026 Limits, Buildings, and What Residents Pay

The middle two columns come from HUD’s FY 2026 income limits file; the last three from HUD’s Section 202 Properties dataset (coverage December 2025, updated January 2026). The income range is the lowest and highest one-person very low-income limit among the HUD areas inside that state — your county sits somewhere between them. “Median tenant rent” is the middle value of the average rent HUD reports for each property in that state.

State	FY2026 one-person very low-income limit (lowest–highest area)	HUD elderly properties	Assisted units	Median tenant rent
Alabama	$26,000–$40,300	155	9,236	$365
Alaska	$37,100–$51,200	26	587	$533
Arizona	$23,300–$39,350	99	6,642	$368
Arkansas	$24,900–$37,450	148	5,643	$367
California	$34,000–$76,150	866	66,718	$425
Colorado	$34,100–$52,500	211	10,615	$384
Connecticut	$43,600–$57,050	223	16,119	$477
Delaware	$36,150–$42,950	36	2,751	$444
District of Columbia	$58,150	30	2,391	$411
Florida	$27,400–$50,200	329	27,730	$354
Georgia	$26,950–$41,250	212	14,398	$365
Hawaii	$42,350–$53,900	37	1,827	$429
Idaho	$30,800–$41,800	67	2,305	$381
Illinois	$31,400–$47,550	433	32,822	$392
Indiana	$29,700–$38,650	228	15,591	$390
Iowa	$32,950–$42,850	179	8,885	$387
Kansas	$30,000–$39,700	143	7,540	$384
Kentucky	$25,200–$38,500	179	10,242	$364
Louisiana	$23,700–$36,500	149	9,565	$354
Maine	$32,200–$48,700	177	6,014	$436
Maryland	$33,250–$58,150	256	15,404	$405
Massachusetts	$39,250–$63,750	461	35,204	$485
Michigan	$29,300–$48,450	379	33,295	$390
Minnesota	$34,300–$47,550	422	16,757	$404
Mississippi	$25,200–$34,350	138	6,875	$341
Missouri	$27,150–$40,750	246	15,986	$370
Montana	$31,850–$45,600	67	3,071	$386
Nebraska	$32,950–$41,200	124	4,460	$379
Nevada	$36,000–$40,900	26	1,787	$351
New Hampshire	$41,200–$60,000	142	5,334	$489
New Jersey	$34,150–$54,200	265	28,415	$425
New Mexico	$25,550–$59,850	49	2,389	$352
New York	$31,500–$59,400	687	54,119	$408
North Carolina	$27,450–$46,350	274	13,294	$379
North Dakota	$37,500–$45,800	44	1,267	$368
Ohio	$27,650–$49,350	649	43,324	$382
Oklahoma	$26,600–$34,100	113	5,288	$370
Oregon	$29,300–$44,950	159	6,980	$375
Pennsylvania	$30,200–$42,950	542	42,677	$409
Rhode Island	$39,250–$48,200	139	11,907	$464
South Carolina	$26,150–$41,150	115	6,141	$369
South Dakota	$33,100–$41,950	74	2,039	$373
Tennessee	$27,300–$40,650	237	17,257	$377
Texas	$29,300–$48,900	385	20,400	$352
Utah	$37,250–$58,700	59	2,874	$377
Vermont	$36,650–$43,650	87	2,292	$454
Virginia	$28,000–$58,150	193	13,772	$386
Washington	$33,550–$57,550	248	11,201	$377
West Virginia	$26,300–$44,950	81	6,446	$359
Wisconsin	$33,600–$47,400	372	19,800	$395
Wyoming	$34,800–$52,000	29	952	$410

Puerto Rico appears in both datasets and is far off this scale: its one-person limits run $9,800 to $14,500, and its 22 properties report a median tenant rent of $201. The Virgin Islands has one property in the file.

Two honest cautions about this table. The income range is the spread across areas within a state, not a limit you can apply to yourself — your county’s own number is the one that counts, and one-person and two-person limits differ. And the rent column is what current residents pay after subsidy, which is a function of their incomes, not a price list.

What You Would Actually Pay

The rent formula is in the statute, not just the rulebook. 12 U.S.C. 1701q(c)(3) says a very low-income person pays the highest of “(A) 30 percent of the person’s adjusted monthly income, (B) 10 percent of the person’s monthly income,” or the housing portion of a welfare payment designated for that purpose. 24 CFR 5.628 repeats it and adds the minimum rent as a fourth floor.

The word doing the work is adjusted. Your rent is not 30% of your Social Security check. It is 30% of what is left after the deductions in 24 CFR 5.611, and 24 CFR 5.601(d) applies that section to Section 202 by name.

The Two Deductions That Matter for Seniors

The elderly family deduction. 24 CFR 5.611(a)(2) gives “$525 for any elderly family or disabled family,” and says HUD adjusts the figure annually for inflation. Ask the property for the current year’s amount rather than assuming $525.

Unreimbursed health and medical care expenses — above 10%, not 3%. This is the change that catches people who were in assisted housing years ago, or who read an old guide. 24 CFR 5.611(a)(3) now deducts medical costs only “to the extent the sum exceeds ten percent of annual income.” What counts is broad: 24 CFR 5.603 defines health and medical care expenses as costs of “the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease,” and says they “include medical insurance premiums and long-term care premiums.” Your Medicare premiums are in scope. (If this sounds familiar, it is the same logic as the SNAP medical expense deduction for seniors, with a different threshold.)

There are two hardship valves in the same section, and almost nobody is told about them:

• Phased-in relief for anyone who was already getting the deduction under the old 3% threshold as of January 1, 2024: the threshold is 5% of annual income, then 7.5% twelve months later, then 10% after twenty-four months.
• General hardship relief for an elderly or disabled family whose medical costs jumped or whose circumstances changed: the threshold drops to 5%, and while it “ends when the circumstances that made the family eligible for the relief are no longer applicable or after 90 days, whichever comes earlier,” the rule expressly allows the owner to extend it “for one or more additional 90-day periods while the family’s hardship condition continues.”

If your medical spending rises after you move in, ask in writing for a hardship determination under 24 CFR 5.611(c)(2). It is a rent question, not a favor.

What Residents Actually Pay

Across the 9,556 properties in HUD’s file that report resident data, the middle property’s average tenant rent is $392 a month, and the middle property’s average resident household income is $16,792 a year. The middle property also reports an average utility allowance of $40, and one person per unit.

Two more numbers from the same file describe who lives there. At the middle property, 81.8% of residents have income below 30% of the area median — far below the 50% ceiling — and 9.3% are 85 or older. Median occupancy is 96.3%. These are full buildings serving people well under the income limit, which is the real reason waiting lists are long.

What These Buildings Are — and Are Not

They are not nursing homes, and cannot become them. 24 CFR 891.220 is one sentence long: “Projects may not include facilities for infirmaries, nursing stations, or spaces for overnight care.”

They do come with a service coordinator. 12 U.S.C. 1701q(g)(1) says services “may include (A) meal service adequate to meet nutritional need; (B) housekeeping aid; (C) personal assistance; (D) transportation services; (E) health-related services,” plus education about telemarketing fraud. 24 CFR 891.225(b)(2) funds this from the rental assistance contract, capped at “$15 per unit per month,” and adds a detail worth knowing: if you pay a co-payment for a service, “Such co-payment shall not be included in the Total Tenant Payment.” A service fee is not rent and must not be treated as rent.

They stay affordable for a long time. 12 U.S.C. 1701q(d)(1) requires that all assisted units “be made available for occupancy by very low-income elderly persons for not less than 40 years.”

They are run by nonprofits. The owner must be a private nonprofit organization that “may not be controlled by or be under the direction of persons or firms seeking to derive profit or gain therefrom” (24 CFR 891.205). Of the 11,012 properties in HUD’s elderly-housing file, 2,677 carry a Section 202 capital advance, 2,380 carry a Section 8 202 contract from the older generation of the program, and 177 carry a Section 202 direct loan. A given building may sit under more than one of those.

What to Have Ready Before You Apply

24 CFR 891.410(b) tells the owner what to collect. Working backwards from it, here is the pile to assemble once and photocopy for every property you apply to:

• Proof of age for the 62-year-old — one member is enough
• Social Security numbers and proof for everyone in the household. Under 24 CFR 5.216(g)(1) the card is not the only acceptable proof: “An original document issued by a federal or state government agency, which contains the name of the individual and the SSN of the individual, along with other identifying information” also counts — and paragraph (i) says the owner “must not reject documentation referred to in paragraph (g)”
• Proof of all income — Social Security or SSI award letter, pension statements, annuity or IRA distributions, any wages
• Asset statements — bank, brokerage, retirement accounts, and the income each produced, for the net-assets certification required by 24 CFR 891.415(a)(2)
• Your unreimbursed medical costs for a full year — insurance and long-term care premiums, prescriptions, dental, hearing, vision, mileage to appointments. This is the deduction that moves your rent
• The signed consent forms for wage and claim information from state agencies, required by 24 CFR part 5, subpart B
• A live-in aide’s details, if you need one
• Deposit money — one month’s tenant rent or $50, whichever is greater, and ask about paying it in installments as 24 CFR 891.435(a) permits

One practical note from the rule: if you are missing SSN documentation, 24 CFR 5.216(h)(1) says you “may retain [your] place on the waiting list for the program but cannot become a participant” until you produce it. Get on the list now; chase the paperwork after.

Waiting Lists, Rejections, and Your Rights

The list must be written and in order. 24 CFR 891.410(a) requires the owner to “maintain a written, chronological waiting list showing the name, race, gender, ethnicity, and date of each person applying.”

A closed list is legal. Paragraph (d) of the same section: if the list is so long that you “would not be likely to be admitted for the next 12 months, the Owner may advise the applicant that no additional applications for admission are being considered for that reason.” Ask when it reopens and apply at several properties.

A rejection comes with a written reason and a review. Paragraph (e) requires prompt written notice of the determination, the reasons, and your right to request a review — and states that the review “may not be conducted by a member of the Owner’s staff who made the initial decision to reject the applicant.”

Once you are in, income is rechecked yearly — but a raise does not evict you. Paragraph (g) requires reexamination “at least every 12 months.” Paragraph (g)(3)(i) is the protection: a household stays eligible for subsidy “until the total tenant payment equals or exceeds the gross rent,” and “The termination of subsidy eligibility will not affect the household’s other rights under its lease.” If your income drops again, assistance can resume and you do not have to re-qualify for admission from scratch.

How to Find One Near You

There is no single national application. You apply to each property, which is why the search matters more than the form.

1. Search HUD’s own map. HUD publishes the Section 202 Properties dataset on its open-data portal with property names, addresses and on-site phone numbers. It is the same file the numbers in this guide were computed from.
2. Look up your county’s income limit at HUD’s income limits page before you call, so you can answer the first question they ask.
3. Call the properties and ask four things: Is the waiting list open? What is the current elderly-family deduction amount? Do you accept a benefit award letter as SSN proof? Can the deposit be paid in installments?
4. Ask your Area Agency on Aging which local buildings actually have movement. The federal Eldercare Locator points to the agency covering your county.
5. Apply to more than one. With median occupancy at 96.3%, one application is a lottery ticket; five is a plan.

If Section 202 Is Not a Fit

• The waiting list is years long. A Housing Choice Voucher or public housing run on separate lists — apply to those too.
• You own your home and want to stay. USDA Section 504 repair grants and Rebuilding Together fix the house instead of moving you.
• Rent is affordable but the bills are not. LIHEAP covers energy costs and Lifeline covers phone and internet.
• You want one screening for everything. NCOA’s BenefitsCheckUp is free and built for people 60 and older.
• Your income is the real problem. SSI and Medicare Savings Programs put money back each month, and both affect the adjusted income this program uses.
• You cannot reach anyone. Dial 2-1-1; our 211 guide explains what that call can and cannot do.

How We Checked This

Every rule and quotation here was read from a primary source on September 2, 2026. The program rules came from the text of 24 CFR part 891 — sections 891.205, 891.220, 891.225, 891.410, 891.415 and 891.435 — and the income and rent rules from 24 CFR part 5, subpart F, sections 5.601, 5.603, 5.609, 5.611, 5.618 and 5.628, plus 5.216 in subpart B. The statute came from 12 U.S.C. 1701q and 42 U.S.C. 1437a on GovInfo.

The numbers are ours, computed from HUD’s files. The income-limit figures come from HUD’s FY 2026 Section 8 Income Limits spreadsheet, downloaded from HUD User; we deduplicated it to one row per HUD income-limit area, which gave 2,657 areas across the 50 states and DC, and took the lowest, highest and middle one-person very low-income limit for each state. The property counts, unit counts and rent figures come from HUD’s Section 202 Properties dataset (coverage December 2025, updated January 2026), 11,012 records; 1,456 of them report no resident data, so the rent, income, age and occupancy medians are drawn from the 9,556 that do.

Four places where the common understanding and the actual rule diverge, and where we followed the rule:

1. “Both of you have to be 62.” The definition is of a household, not a person: “one or more persons at least one of whom is 62 years of age or more at the time of initial occupancy” (12 U.S.C. 1701q(k)(1); 24 CFR 891.205).
2. “Savings over $100,000 disqualify you, and you cannot own property.” That restriction is 24 CFR 5.618, and paragraph (e) of that section limits it to “the Section 8 (tenant-based and project-based) and public housing programs.” 24 CFR 5.601(e) repeats the limitation. We found no provision in 24 CFR part 891 or part 5 subpart F extending 5.618 to Section 202, and we say so plainly rather than repeating the general advice. Assets still affect your income and must be certified under 24 CFR 891.415(a)(2), and a specific property may apply its own policy — ask, and ask for the citation.
3. “Medical expenses over 3% of income come off your rent.” The threshold in 24 CFR 5.611(a)(3) is now ten percent. The 3% figure survives only inside the phase-in relief at 5.611(c)(1), for families who held the deduction as of January 1, 2024, and even there it steps to 5%, then 7.5%, then 10%.
4. “If your income rises, you lose the apartment.” 24 CFR 891.410(g)(3)(i) says the opposite: subsidy continues until your total tenant payment reaches the gross rent, and “The termination of subsidy eligibility will not affect the household’s other rights under its lease.”

Two access notes, so you know how the sourcing was done. eCFR’s ordinary web pages redirect automated requests, so the regulation text above was pulled from eCFR’s versioner API against the current title text; the links point to the human-readable sections. HUD.gov itself blocked every request we made, from two different tools, so nothing in this guide relies on a HUD.gov program page — the HUD material here comes from HUD User and HUD’s open-data portal, which were reachable, and from the Code of Federal Regulations and the United States Code. We link the federal Eldercare Locator but do not quote it, because its content did not render for us today.

What we could not verify, and did not claim: whether any particular property has an open waiting list, how long its list is, or what it charges; the exact 2026 dollar value of the inflation-adjusted elderly family deduction, because we did not read it from a primary HUD publication; whether a minimum rent applies to a Section 202 unit and at what amount, because 24 CFR 5.630 is written in terms of PHAs and Section 8 programs and we found no Section 202 figure; and whether an individual owner applies asset policies beyond what the regulations require. HUD’s waiting-time field in the property dataset was empty across all records, so we make no claim about typical waits.

Section 202 properties are owned and run locally by nonprofit organizations, and admission practices vary building to building. The federal rules quoted here set the floor and the outer limits, not what any one property does this month. If something here contradicts what a property manager, your Area Agency on Aging, or HUD tells you, trust them for your case and tell us so we can re-check the guide.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice.