In the Media

“[It’s] the fundamental sin in our disaster policy in this country, that everything is based on property and possession,” says Carlos Martín, a housing and climate researcher at Harvard University. Many renters have less wealth, and receive less government assistance after disasters, than homeowners, and suffer more severe and long-term financial impacts as a result, he explains. “It compounds these differences between the landed-gentry haves and the rest of the country that are have-nots.”

“The levels of risk and the kinds of hazards that a property can be exposed to are massively changing,” said Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

A record 12.1 million Americans — or about 1 in 4 renters — are spending at least half of their incomes on rent and utilities, putting them at increased risk of eviction and homelessness, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Meanwhile, there is hardly anywhere in the country where a person working a full-time minimum-wage job can afford a one-bedroom rental, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The median U.S. home sale price hit a record high in July, according to Redfin, keeping more people, especially younger Americans, in rentals. And now there’s a new generation leading the rental pack, according to a report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University: Generation Z.

Homeowner remodeling spending has declined since 2022, however, a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University expects it to pick up in 2025. Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies associate director of the remodeling futures program Abbe Will joins Wealth! to discuss the projection and how homeowners are managing the housing market.

The median price of a single-family house in the Boston metropolitan area soared 40 percent over the past five years, according to March 2024 data from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. (The median is the price at which half the homes are more expensive and half are less.)

About 45 million Americans rent homes with a record high 22.4 million households spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities in 2022, according to a study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Nationwide, rent prices have risen by 21% since January 2021, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. Home prices are on the rise, too.
In early 2024, home prices hit an all-time record, rising 6.4% from February 2023 to 2024, according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Higher rents mean that even temporary income losses can be too much for tenants to ride out: About a quarter of renter households in America spend 50% or more of their income on housing, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Asking prices for rentals jumped in the aftermath of the pandemic and have since cooled, but the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies found in its most recent report that half of renters were “cost burdened” because they spend more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities.