In case this is helpful and not too wonky, I will share that affordable housing is generally defined using a percentage of area median income - to see what is "affordable" at various percentages check out the link below. If you are in market rate housing (unrestricted), it does fluctuate with the market without an affordable cap and to your point, is might often not feel affordable.

Using this chart, your two bedroom unit would be affordable at the 80% of area median income level if it were priced at or below $2090 a month including utilities. Bedrooms are priced with an "estimate" of 1.5 people per bedroom (no matter how many people are actually living there). For a two person household to be eligible to rent that apartment with two bedrooms, they would need earn at or below $74,320 per year. As area median income changes (it usually rises, but sometimes it goes down) the limits change. The basic idea nationwide across many programs is rent + utilities should be about 30% of people's income to be considered affordable. Some of the details vary, but this is generally how most programs are structured. There is only one meaningful program that creates affordable housing at scale throughout the country and it is the low-income housing tax credit program. It's kind of a misnomer, because if you look at the income limits below you can see many are not low - they actually span a broad range of jobs including many public servants.

https://dhcd.maryland.gov/HousingDevelopment/Documents/rhf/2022MDIncomeLimitsRents.pdf