In the Media

“There is no one perfect measure of the housing shortage,” said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “The easiest thing to look at is the housing market and the way prices are growing here. That is indicative of extreme demand that the state isn‘t meeting.”

Estimates of the national housing shortage last year varied widely, from 1.5 million houses and apartments to 20.1 million; since then, another 1.6 million houses and apartments have been built. Most experts estimate a shortage of 1.5 million to 5.5 million, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Born from the mid-1990s to early 2010s, Gen Z’s ages range from 15 to 30. They represent 47% of recent U.S. renters, and comprise 25% of all U.S. renters, according to Zillow. As of 2023, there were 9.1 million Gen Z renter households, says Alexander Hermann, senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

A recent report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that half of all renters in the US spend over 30% of their income on rent and utilities, which is more than at any other time in history. With more people spending a greater share of their earnings on rent, it’s essential to understand a tenant’s rights.

The U.S. home price index jumped 46 percent from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to last year. Add to that a budding insurance crisis driven in part by climate change, and a history of reactive rather than forward-looking federal policy responses—these are the ingredients of a crisis. In a March 25 briefing, Carlos Martín of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies alluded to this risk as he spoke about the current state of climate adaptations in relation to U.S. housing. JCHS postdoctoral fellow Steven Koller followed with a detailed analysis of climate change impacts on the residential insurance market.

“Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, have been proposed as a way to add housing stock to address the country’s housing crisis,” according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. These “independent living spaces,” the Center notes, are on the same lot as a larger primary dwelling, and have their own kitchen, sleeping quarters, and bathroom.

"Improving America’s Housing" is issued every two years and tracks significant changes in the home repair and renovation markets over time, utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. But it’s not an industry trend report, says Sophia Wedeen, senior research associate at the JCHS; rather, "Improving America’s Housing" speaks to the renovation market’s health, possible causes for fluctuations, and the effects that renovations can have on the housing market at large.

Many Americans who left large cities during the pandemic headed to suburbs, small cities and rural areas. Since then, net migration outflow from big cities has tapered off, returning to the prepandemic trend of suburbanization, said Riordan Frost of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Younger people are waiting and seeing as they continue to trail their parents’ generation in terms of homeownership, which can be an important financial milestone. “Homeowners have about 40 times the wealth of renters,” said Daniel McCue, senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

According to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Improving America’s Housing, homeowner spending for disaster repairs has trended up in all regions of the country, totaling $49 billion in 2022 and 2023, as compared to $16 billion in 2002 to 2003. This also means that disaster repair spending as a share of total home improvement spend went from an average of 4.4% in the decade before 2004 to 6.4% in the decade since 2013.