In the Media

I was first made aware of the disciplinary divide between architects and planners, when it comes to policy that impacts the built environment, a few years ago when I joined several architects to pitch a research project on the impact of egress stair requirements on housing typologies to Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.

A recent report from The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies noted that household growth—the change in the number of occupied housing units—dropped to about 1.1 million in 2025.

“The recent slowing of the country’s population growth has absolutely played a role in the current softening of the housing market,” Alexander Hermann, a senior research associate at JCHS, told Newsweek. “But it’s not solving the affordability crisis that we have,” he added.

New GSD research shows that compliance with the Massachusetts transit-linked zoning law is both more widespread—and more nuanced—than is often depicted in the media.

Higher-income households have been driving rental demand in the last five to 10 years, says Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate at Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That means a greater demand for buildings with premium amenities or space for a couple to grow their family.

About a third of households headed by someone 65 or older were “cost-burdened” in 2024, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That means they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

On the whole, the bill strives to increase the U.S. housing supply, which suffered more than a decade of underbuilding after the Great Recession, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies' annual 2026 housing report.

The situation is similarly tough for buyers, with national prices for single-family homes averaging about five times the median household income, according to 2025 data analyzed last week by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Existing home prices are up 54 percent since 2020, and homes cost nearly five times the median income, well above historic norms, according to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of apartments renting for less than $1,000 a month dropped by about a third, according to a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It's a function of a lack of supply pushing up rents generally, and the fact that building new has gotten so bloody expensive,” said Chris Herbert, managing director at the Joint Center.