In the Media

Extreme weather is putting more people at greater risk, including 60 million homes in areas that could expect at least moderate losses, according to a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

“Even if people would want, in a perfect world, to move to a different place that didn’t have whatever-it-might-be laws, they’re kept in place by these bigger, more salient forces for them,” Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, told me. “Even though there are abortion restrictions, people move because of affordability. Even though there are wildfires and more natural disasters in a place, people move because of affordability.”

Harvard’s Improving America’s Housing Report shows that 34% of home improvement spending goes to energy-related projects, which has remained steady during the last decade.

In the US, it’s clear the future of aging will involve millions more people living alone, says Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing an Aging Society program at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

A paper from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard studies looked into why landlords would want to keep their storefronts vacant. “We conclude that in the long run, a primary driver of retail vacancy in dense urban areas is the fact that landlords are willing to forgo rents today in order to preserve the option to lease their space to someone else (who might pay higher rents) tomorrow,” Erica Moszkowski, one of the study’s co-authors, explained.

A 2021 survey of renters in the U.S. found more than half of respondents said indoor air quality was their biggest source of concern among healthy housing issues. It ranked well above any other factor including pests, water quality and chemicals, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Farnsworth Group.

Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.

According to a report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, home renovation and maintenance spending grew by 16% in 2022, but its growth is now slowing—2023 is only seeing 2.6% growth.

According to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the median age of owner-occupied homes in the United States was 41 years in 2021.

The U.S. housing crisis continues on, despite high rates of new, multifamily construction, reads a recent report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.