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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Slate

Democrats Have a Big Strategy to Build More Housing

What can an annual outlay of $100 million (the PRO budget for next year) do to solve a problem as big as a deficit of 3 million homes? “State and local governments look at each other all the time, so those little examples can bear a lot of fruit,” said Chris Herbert, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard and a fan of the program. “There’s not a lot of money out there, but these grants can become an example for other places.”

The Nation

For Harris, Housing Takes Center Stage, but Tenants Are Not the Audience

Severely cost-burdened tenant households (those putting 50 percent or more of their paycheck toward rent) are also at record numbers, increasing in rank by 1.5 million since 2019 and now surpassing 12 million households. This should hardly be a surprise, because while median rents have risen 21 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 2001, median renter household incomes have risen just 2 percent.

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.