In the media

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Our research is regularly cited in national and local news outlets; below is some of our recent press coverage.

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The New York Times

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tina Smith: Our Solution to the Housing Crisis

Outsourcing development to the private market leaves affordable housing subject to the boom-and-bust cycle of private investment. What’s more, the federal government relinquishes the oversight needed to protect tenants from abusive landlords and racial discrimination. The result is a housing market where corporate landlords make record profits while half of America’s 44 million renters struggle to pay rent.

CBS News

Affording a home in the U.S. increasingly seems like an impossible dream

According to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, rent growth has slowed in recent months, but is still up 26% since early 2020. Recent data from the Census Bureau also shows that 21 million households — nearly half of all renters — were cost-burdened last year, meaning they spent more than a third of their income on rent.

Pew Stateline

The nation’s last refuge for affordable homes is in Northeast Ohio

Home prices have increased by 47% nationwide just since 2020, according to a June report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. A major factor is that there aren’t many homes for sale: Many current homeowners are reluctant to sell because they’re locked into historically low interest rates. Meanwhile, investors have gobbled up single-family starter homes, reducing the supply.

Marketplace

Affordable homebuying programs can be great — until those houses need repairs

There’s not much incentive for homeowners who buy affordable units to invest in repairs since future sale prices are capped to keep these homes affordable from one owner to the next. Most affordable housing nonprofits or programs don’t have the resources to tackle these repairs, said Todd Swanstrom, a professor at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis who co-wrote a recent report on nationwide housing deterioration.

The New York Times

What Kalamazoo (Yes, Kalamazoo) Reveals About the Nation’s Housing Crisis

Middle-income renters have seen their rental burdens grow rapidly over the past two decades, according to a recent analysis of census data by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Of course, poor people face more-severe rent burdens than middle-income renters, and their lives are more precarious...

Bloomberg

NYC's Rent Surge Drives 86-Year-Old to Move in With a 'Boommate'

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that almost a million people over the age of 65 now live with unrelated housemates. Roommate finder sites have seen an influx of older users, with SpareRoom experiencing its fastest growth among that cohort. And one-in-four roommates in the US is aged 45 or above, according to the site, a figure that’s more than doubled in the past decade.

The Boston Globe

$217,000 a year to afford a home in Boston? Who can even afford that?

The Harvard research estimates that a single-family home in the Boston metropolitan area in March 2024 was on average $705,000. The researchers used an affordability formula to estimate that homebuyers therefore need an annual income of $217,000 to buy a median-priced single-family home in Boston.