In the Media

A new report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies predicts spending on remodeling will grow by just 0.5% in the coming year, which is well below the rate of inflation. Rachel Bogardus Drew, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said the outlook for the remodeling industry is, in a word, “stable.”

Jennifer Molinsky, who directs the Housing an Aging Society Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies says one reason why is high demand for social support. “At a population level, we see more affordability challenges as people get older, because their incomes are often fixed or just not keeping up with the rising costs around them,” she says.

What does social housing mean in the United States today? This roundtable, convened at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, brings together four housing experts: Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies and lecturer in urban planning and design; Susanne Schindler, research fellow at the Center; Becca Heilman, graduate research assistant at the Center and master in city planning candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Magda Maaoui, assistant professor of urban planning.

Chris Herbert, managing director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said they’re rising much more slowly now than they were a couple of years ago. “Right now, we’re seeing house prices are growing low single digits, basically, less than inflation,” he said. “And so while we say that house prices haven't fallen, they are falling in real terms after we account for inflation.”

Beyond offsetting financial woes, shared living arrangements among older adults can help combat social isolation, said Jennifer Molinsky, director of a program studying affordability and housing policy for aging residents at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“The more repair needs a home has, the more we worry about older adults who are living on a fixed income — especially in this moment when the cost of supplies and the workforce are increasing,” said Samara Scheckler, a researcher with Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

US seniors living with non-relatives have now topped 1mn, roughly doubling since 2006, according to Samara Scheckler at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “Housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for older adults and more are carrying mortgages into later life, so putting somebody into the house can be a way to manage that,” she tells me.

"Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age," said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. "It's climbed up the income scale. So more and more middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before."

Forty-nine percent of all improvement spending is now for necessary replacements like HVAC that owners can’t delay, said Rachel Drew, director of Harvard’s Remodeling Futures Program.

Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, zoomed out to numbers that show slowing growth across the country. That national fall is also driven by immigration. And Frost said the Census Bureau is projecting an even bigger drop. The new estimates, he pointed out, stop tracking any changes nine months ago.