In the Media

The recent decrease in rates is equivalent to a 2 percent reduction in the price of the home, according to Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Middle-income renters have seen their rental burdens grow rapidly over the past two decades, according to a recent analysis of census data by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Of course, poor people face more-severe rent burdens than middle-income renters, and their lives are more precarious...

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that almost a million people over the age of 65 now live with unrelated housemates. Roommate finder sites have seen an influx of older users, with SpareRoom experiencing its fastest growth among that cohort. And one-in-four roommates in the US is aged 45 or above, according to the site, a figure that’s more than doubled in the past decade.

The Harvard research estimates that a single-family home in the Boston metropolitan area in March 2024 was on average $705,000. The researchers used an affordability formula to estimate that homebuyers therefore need an annual income of $217,000 to buy a median-priced single-family home in Boston.

High housing costs are pushing more Americans to find roommates, including baby boomers and empty nesters. Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing and Aging Society Program at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, discusses this trend on the radio program, On Point.

Housing has for several years been the most common reason for moving, and housing in America’s biggest and richest blue cities is consistently the least affordable. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, among the cities with the highest median price-to-income ratios in 2023, nine of the top 10 were in California or Hawaii. The five cities with the most cost-burdened renters and owners were Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego, Honolulu, and Oxnard, followed by Riverside, Bakersfield, the New York metro area, and Fresno.

“[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.