Housing Continuum

What Is the Housing Continuum?

The housing continuum is a way of picturing every kind of housing a community needs, arranged in a line from the most supported to the least. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada’s national housing agency, defines it as the broad range of housing options that help different households reach affordable, appropriate homes. Its version includes homelessness, shelters and transitional housing, community housing, affordable rental, market rental, and homeownership.

U.S. planners use the same idea. Colorado’s Division of Housing, drawing on a graphic from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, describes a continuum that aligns income levels, expressed as a share of area median income (AMI), with the types of housing commonly affordable at each level.

How the Housing Continuum Works

Each stage serves a different need, and planners use the continuum to check whether a community has options at every stage. The table below is illustrative. Actual stages and income bands differ by community and program.

Colorado’s guidance stresses that these are rules of thumb. In some communities, a first-time buyer at 50% of AMI can find an affordable starter home. In others, even a household at 80% of AMI may struggle to find one.

Housing Continuum vs. Continuum of Care

The names are easy to confuse. A Continuum of Care (CoC) is both a specific HUD funding program and the name for the local group of service providers, governments, and other organizations that carries out the program’s planning responsibilities in an area. The program funds nonprofit providers and state and local governments working to end homelessness. It covers only the crisis and supportive end of the housing continuum. See the Continuum of Care Program for details.

Why It Matters for Workforce Housing

The continuum makes gaps visible. Comparing supply with each stage shows where a community’s options run thin, including the middle range where many workforce households fall. A housing needs assessment typically measures supply and demand at each stage to show where those gaps are.

A line can suggest that people must move through each stage in order. They do not have to. Housing First programs, for example, offer permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness without requiring them to graduate through a series of service programs first. The continuum is best read as a planning map, not a required sequence.