In the Media

“Housing is the largest building sector in the U.S.,” wrote the authors of a report in 2023 by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard. “Yet it might well be the one that imposes the greatest constraints on design and innovation.”

According to a 2025 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, over a third of older households paid “more than 30 percent of their income for housing.”

In 2024, families needed an income of $126,700 to qualify for a median-price home, up from $79,600 in 2021, Chris Herbert, the managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, told me. “That priced 8 million renters out of the market,” he said, noting that most renters make $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

Rent control has been banned in Massachusetts for more than three decades. But a proposed 2026 ballot question could change that, if voters decide to cap annual rent increases at 5% — at most — across the state. Alexander von Hoffman, lecturer in urban planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design, joined GBH’s All Things Considered guest host Saraya Wintersmith to break down what it all means.

Some 9 million people in the U.S. get federal housing assistance, and the cost of rent is unaffordable for large numbers of Americans.

These mass deportations might worsen chronic labor shortages in the country and reduce the country’s ability to build and remodel homes, according to researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).

For many homeowners, their house will be one of their largest assets as they head into retirement. In 2022, median home equity for homeowners age 65 and over was $250,000, up 47% from $170,000 in 2019, according to a 2023 report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

More than 1 million Americans over the age of 65 lived with roommates they aren't related to in 2024 — a 16% increase from 2019, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“There is broad agreement that a shortage of new homes is a major driver of our housing affordability crisis, and most policy attention has focused on reforming zoning to allow higher-density development,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “Far less attention has been paid to the role of building codes, which often make it difficult to create more affordable and appealing housing options.”

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported this month that “the number of cost-burdened households rose to record highs in 2024 as housing affordability remained a widespread challenge.”