In the Media

Excerpted from The State of Housing Design 2023, edited by The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Reprinted with permission from Harvard University Press.

A report issued by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University last month found that in 2022, an unprecedented 50 percent of U.S. renters spent 30 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities. Worse still, nearly half of that group are severely cost-burdened, dedicating more than 50 percent of their income to housing costs.

From coast to coast, housing has emerged as perhaps the biggest statehouse issue this year. The number of households considered by the federal government to be rent-burdened — meaning that rent consumes more than 30 percent of their income — climbed to a record high of 22.4 million in 2022, according to a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The change nationwide comes even as the influx of new residents continues. Last year there were 44.3 million renter households in the US — about 34% of all US households — according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Rent has skyrocketed in the United States. That means Americans are handing over a bigger portion of their paycheck to their housing costs, leaving less money for things like food, electricity and commuting. The pandemic and inflation have both played a role in pushing rents higher, but Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate at Harvard's Joint Center on Housing Studies, says it's not all bad news.

This dynamic is one factor driving historically large percentages of older Americans to carry mortgage debt into their senior years, according to a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. In 2022, researchers found that just over 40 percent of homeowners older than 64 had a mortgage, a jump from roughly 25 percent a generation ago.

More than 18 million rental units are located in areas exposed to extreme weather hazards, according to the American Rental Housing Report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of Americans, with half of all renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. That's according to a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies that examined 2022 census data.

“It’s one of the worst years we’ve ever seen,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a senior research associate at the Harvard center, who added that the level of cost-burdened households in 2022 had not been seen since the Great Recession in 2008, when 10 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure.

More than 18 million rental units across the U.S. are exposed to climate- and weather-related hazards, according to the latest American Rental Housing Report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Harvard researchers paired data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index with the five-year American Community Survey to find out what units are in the areas that are expected to have annual economic loss from environmental hazards such as wildfires, flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes and more.