In the Media

At the core of the problem are “age-old supply and demand issues,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Vacancy rates are rising, said Alexander Hermann, a research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “You’ve had this huge rush to build apartments in the last couple of years, and projects are bigger and bigger. It’s more common now to be building 50 or more units,” he said. “You can start to see where new supply is coming online, you see starker and stronger rent decreases.”

“When people approach the decarbonization question, it’s almost always one of technology and economics,” said Carlos Martín, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The median selling price for single-family homes in Greater Boston hit a record high of $910,000 in July. To afford those prices, a household would need an annual income of at least $300,000, according to Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

One report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies last summer showed that while the U.S. was building more homes than it has in 50 years, it was still losing the lowest-income units faster than they were being replaced.

Nearly one-third of all US households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2021, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ analysis of Census Bureau data.

The housing payments needed to buy a median-priced home reached $3,000 a month in March 2023, according to the State of the Nation’s Housing 2023 report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. This figure includes mortgage, insurance and property tax.

Three out of five renters aged 80 and older in the Boston metropolitan area pay more than 30% of their income on housing, Jennifer Molinsky, project director of the Housing an Aging Society Program at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, told the Boston Globe. One in five pays more than half, she added.

A 2020 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University notes various ways thoughtful design can deliver high-quality, affordable housing in multifamily residential developments. Mechanical and plumbing systems may make kitchens and bathrooms fixed components of a house, but the report noted that building a single “wet” wall can make those spaces more efficient.

Only about 40 percent of rental households purchase renters insurance, according to a 2022 report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies by Harvard University, compared with 88 percent of homeowners who purchase coverage.