In the Media

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.

Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, notes that some urban areas may see even more demand.

“Unfortunately it’s a repeating story,” said Carlos Martín at the Brookings Institution and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. “We see the most vulnerable people — this includes low-income people, people of color and people with mixed immigration status — living in precarious housing that is more likely to be damaged by these disasters.”

A report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Penn’s Housing Initiative drives the point home: In 2019, 3.5% of landlords who responded to the survey said they had a rental property listed for sale. By 2020, it jumped to 21%. Deferred maintenance jumped from 5.4% to 36%.

“We’re seeing fewer and fewer and fewer of these very big metropolitan business places that are affordable,” Raheem Hanifa said. “And Chicago was one of the last few that was on that list.”