In the Media

Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, told me that “the promise of the Sun Belt has often been more affordability and economic opportunity. But as that wanes, that could discourage people.”

In Greater Boston, large numbers of working- and middle-class residents have become “forever renters.” For couples and families of all races and backgrounds, immigrant and native-born, the price of homes, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, is many times what they can pay. For them, the American dream of homeownership is only a dream.

Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies who testified as a neutral expert, said studies have found regulations on rental prices are associated with a drop in rental supply. She also said evidence suggests the policy has little effect on new construction and, in Massachusetts, the end of rent control in 1994 didn’t have a significant impact on building trends.

Austin is one beneficiary of a boom in development over the past few years. In 2024, 608,000 multifamily units were constructed, the highest annual volume since 1986, researchers at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies explained in their report, America's Rental Housing 2026.

Demand for rental housing is driven primarily by U.S. citizens, but immigrants have long been a key subset of renters: They headed 9.6 million renter households (21%) in 2024, according to the recently published America’s Rental Housing report by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. Researchers also note that immigrants contribute to the economy and pay taxes, supporting the communities they live and work in.

As retirees struggle with affordability – more than a third are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, Harvard’s housing studies team found – poor financial decisions about their mortgage can have a significant impact on their month-to-month finances.

Less attention has been given to the full-blown crisis facing renters. A new report out Thursday from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies shows exactly how bad it’s gotten. Almost half of all renters were burdened by high costs in 2024, meaning they spent more than a third of their incomes on rent, a sign of financial distress.

According to a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, construction material costs have skyrocketed in recent years, adding to a wide range of conditions that are slowing the production of rental housing.

"When households are spending more on rent, it means they have less left over for everything else,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate for the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. The report found low-income renters have just $210 left after paying rent and utilities each month.

Home prices have ⁠risen 60% since 2019, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the median price of a single-family home in 2024 reached five times the median household income, well above the ratio widely considered to be affordable.