In the Media

Challenges paying for housing can worsen health, make repairs impossible, and lead to unwanted or unnecessary moves, say JCHS's Jennifer Molinsky and Samara Scheckler.

Rachel Bogardus Drew, who runs the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said that home additions represent one answer to the “huge pent-up demand” among people who want to move out of their houses but have not, in a housing market that’s been characterized by sluggish inventory, high prices and elevated interest rates for the past three years.

Chris Herbert, managing director for Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies: "If I'm making a very little amount of money, then spending even a third or 30 percent of my income on housing might mean I don't have enough left over for food or everything else."

"Between 1989 and 2022, the share of homeowners 65 to 79 with a mortgage increased from 24 to 41 percent and the median mortgage debt shot up over 400 percent, from $21,000 in 1989 to $110,000," reports Jennifer Molinsky, director of the Housing an Aging Society Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

At its peak in 2022, 14.2 per 1,000 people were relocating within the country, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). In 2024, the latest data available, this number had dropped to 2.8 per 1,000 people.

New research shows that design competitions are opening the door to innovative solutions that are helping legacy housing players rethink and reimagine how to approach age-old challenges. This study from Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that design competitions can promote public engagement, create trust in government-led efforts, and build capacity in the public and private sectors.

“The door to homeownership in the Boston area has really been shut,” said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard’s housing studies center. “There are hundreds of thousands of people here staring at these numbers saying, ‘Who can actually afford this?’ ”

As a recent working paper from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies explains, during the pandemic years, rural areas saw an inflow of transplants from larger, often more expensive metros as the rise of remote work allowed them to shop for homes further afield. “As a result, net domestic migration—an important driver of housing demand—turned positive in nonmetro counties for the first time in at least a decade,” write the paper’s authors, senior research associate Alexander Hermann and research analyst Peyton Whitney.

It’s a piece of financial advice that’s been around for generations: When searching for a place to live, don’t spend more than 30% of your income on rent. But with housing costs driving inflation today, is that guideline still realistic? By one measure, nearly two-thirds of working-age renters were cost-burdened in 2023, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard found.

In a nondescript office over One Bow Street in Harvard Square, the Joint Center for Housing Studies keeps a finger on the pulse of America’s housing markets — and tries to connect city planners, advocates, and business groups to solve some of the country’s thorniest issues.