In the Media

Growing social isolation and skyrocketing housing costs are driving people across the country to look for new ways of living and “mutual support,” said Jennifer Molinsky, director of Harvard’s Housing an Aging Society Program.

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ latest leading indicator of remodeling activity, or LIRA, suggests homeowner spending on renovations and repairs will fall to $449 billion this year. That would represent a roughly 7% drop from 2023.

Over half of renters were cost-burdened as of 2022, meaning they’re spending more than 30% of their income on rent, according to a report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Amid a historic housing supply shortage, a new working paper by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies posits that continuing to build more homes in the suburbs in the hope this will bring down hosing costs in cities may not be effective.

The research indicates the millennial move likely isn't going anywhere. A recent Harvard study showed the number of millennials moving to peripheral suburbs jumped 30 percent in ten years.

In a persuasive new article published by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the urban historian Jacob Anbinder traces that strange consensus, and the crisis it birthed, to a shift in liberal New York politics in the late 1960s. As the city suffered and the middle class fled, many urban liberals blamed the previous generations’ top down, blunt-instrument housing policies.

“We’re talking about a crisis of affordability in housing across the country, combined with the crisis of the climate change effects. How do we ensure that we provide for our population while making sure that they’re not in harm’s way?” asked Carlos Martín, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

The proportion of older adults with mortgage debt has been rising for decades. From 1989 to 2022, the share of homeowners aged 65 to 79 with mortgages climbed to 41 percent from 24, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The amount they owed rose, too, to $110,000 from $21,000, adjusted for inflation.

Americans are expected to spend $449 billion this year on home renovations and repairs, down from last year's record of $481 billion. That is according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity, which was developed by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Smaller properties with amenities that might appeal to older homeowners, such as no stairs and close proximity to services, are scarce in many areas, said Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing an Aging Society program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The ones that do exist can be expensive, she said.