In the Media

An analysis of government data by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 48 percent of renters living in rural areas and small towns had incomes below $25,000 in 2016.

A recent study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that one in four renters in the Twin Cities spend at least half of their income on rent.

University shutdowns also played a role in sending young adults back home, Daniel McCue, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, noted in an analysis of March 2021 data from the Current Population Survey.

“I think all of those factors will continue to pull on the DIY share of home improvement spending and potentially revert back to these longer-term trends,” Abbe Will of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said.

Only a third of older adults who qualify for subsidized housing actually receive it nationwide. The remainder, as found by Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, are “housing cost burdened,” Schectman said, “meaning they’re spending an inadequate [amount on] money on food and medicine.”

The housing shortage has only worsened and become more complicated since the postwar era. In 2018, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard said the country would need to build at least 1.5 million units of housing every year for ten years to close the gap.

“There’s a state of practice among property managers about how much to keep in reserves, knowing how often different systems in the building may deteriorate. There’s a huge conversation in this country around condo costs and repairs," said Carlos Martín, project director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

For example, Black home buyers, on average, pay significantly higher mortgage interest rates than comparable white borrowers, and the difference is larger for women, according to an analysis by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

During the pandemic, households living in manufactured homes of all types have been about twice as likely to fall behind on rent or mortgage payments as the broader population, according to an analysis of census data by Alexander Hermann, senior research analyst at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Inflation-adjusted home renovation expenditures rose to $312 billion in the first quarter of 2021, the third highest amount on record, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, sitting just below the fourth quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007.