In the media

Newspaper, phone, and a coffee cup

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

To be added to our media list, or if you have an interview request, please contact [email protected] and include your name, press affiliation, phone number, questions/topic, and your deadline. Please do not email our researchers directly. 

(For copyright permission, complete form and send to [email protected])

CityLab

The Urbanist Case for Trailer Parks

Earlier this summer, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University released its annual report on the state of housing affordability in America. The findings aren’t pretty. According to the study, the percentage of cost-burdened renters—households spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing—continues to rise, as rents have risen 12 times faster than income over the last half century.

The Boston Globe

Shortage of skilled laborers adds to homeowners’ headaches, costs

You’ve scoured Pinterest and design magazines for remodeling ideas. You’ve saved up or set up a home equity line to pay for the work. All you need is a contractor to bring your vision to life, so you call up a handful of pros to solicit quotes — and they tell you it’ll be at least a few months before they can fit you in. That’s if they get back to you at all.

WHYY Philadelphia

Old homes, high poverty make Philadelphia housing less than affordable for some

In Philadelphia, it’s not just a shortage of affordable housing that’s causing the crunch. Instead, poor-quality houses and an unusually high poverty rate — about 400,000 Philadelphians are living in poverty — tilt the equation so that demand far outstrips supply here, making affordable homes hard to obtain and difficult to manage.

Marketplace

Labor shortages and high cost of materials depress homebuilding, industry says

Data out today from the Department of Commerce gives us our latest indication that the housing market may be slowing. Housing starts, a statistic that charts when construction begins on the foundation of a new building intended primarily for residential use, declined in June from the month before.

Wall Street Journal

Big Builders Are Remodeling the Housing Market

One of the big mysteries of the housing market since the financial crisis is why sales of new homes have remained so low despite a strong economy and real-estate market. One explanation is a major consolidation among homebuilders, which has given surprising power to some of the big publicly traded companies. That is a big change in what has long been a heavily fragmented industry driven at the margins by small-time construction companies that built like crazy during boom years.

The Washington Post

‘We haven’t made any progress’: Black homeownership is stuck near 30-year lows

In many ways, African Americans have regained the ground lost during the financial crisis. Many are finding jobs and getting raises. But the holy grail of homeownership remains elusive. Forty-three percent of blacks owned homes in 2017, according to an annual report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. In contrast, 72 percent of whites did, a gap that has mostly widened during the past three decades.

Slate

Road to Nowhere: America has a moving crisis

Did you move last year? If so, you took part in a declining ritual—just 11 percent of the U.S. population changed residences last year, down from 12 percent in 2013 and 13 percent in 2006.

The Huffington Post

America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb

By nearly every measure, the American housing sector is broken. For decades, city, state and federal policies have contributed to rising rents, falling subsidies and the systematic shift of homeownership to older, richer and whiter Americans.