In the Media

“We’re not just treading water — we’re falling further behind,” said Chris Herbert, the managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which prepared the analysis at the request of The New York Times. “That was an eye-opener, even for me.”

But the post-pandemic years have delivered a financial double-whammy that has hit vulnerable Americans particularly hard. For one, government supports that helped people weather the economic turmoil of the pandemic drew to an end, cutting off funds and protections.

Secondly, rents have surged, pushing cost burdens for renters to their highest recorded level, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Almost 9 in 10 low-income households with incomes below $15,000 spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2021, the analysis found.

Nearly two-thirds of households in the bottom 20 percent of incomes face “severe cost burdens,” meaning they pay more than half of their income for rent and utilities, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

By 2034, the Census Bureau projects that the US will be home to more people over 65 than people under 18. Finding safe and affordable housing for this fast-growing segment of the population is becoming an urgent task, according to a new report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The report, Housing America’s Older Adults, was issued by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). It explores the many ways the housing stock of the U.S. has been built without the needs of older people in mind, from a lack of accessibility features for those with mobility challenges, to geographic isolation from services, to the sheer dearth of affordable housing for those with limited means.

“It's definitely an increase from before the pandemic,” says Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “In the past decade, interstate migration seemed to kind of plateau a little bit. And then during the pandemic, it has increased, even as mobility overall has continued to go down.”

Nearly 70% of older adults will need long-term care services, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Even on the residential side, conditions have been far from the norm. Americans spent record amounts of money—$567 billion in 2022 alone, per Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies— renovating their houses. Paired with the increased interest in building more rental and accessory dwelling units, the still-tight housing market has dampened demand for new residential designs and created an affordability crisis among consumers, incentivizing more design-oriented solutions to drive affordability.

Thursday's report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found an all-time high of adults age 65 and older are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing − either a mortgage or rent.

A record number of seniors struggle with housing costs. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies says it's going to get worse as the baby boomer generation starts to turn 80 in a few years.