In the Media

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.”

In 2024, immigrants—both with and without legal status—accounted for more than half of construction-trade workers in Texas, California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia, according to Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

According to the latest US Census data, the median age of homes is 40 years old, with nearly half built before 1980. That’s nine years older than the median age of homes in 2005. Millions of those homes have fallen into disrepair, according to a 2023 report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Nearly half of all renters were cost burdened in 2024, meaning they spent more than a third their income on rent and utilities, and 26 percent of them were severely burdened, meaning they spent more than half their income on housing costs, according to the most recent census data analyzed by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

In general, an ADU can add up to 25 percent onto a home’s value, per a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report, though that percentage is dependent on the ADU’s location, the market, and the quality of the build.

Average homeowners insurance premiums rose almost 25% from 2019 to 2024 in real terms. Such costs have contributed to a slump in the condo market, with prices at a decade low, and are one reason for rising rents.

From Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, senior research analyst Riordan Frost: "My research has looked at both the state level and metro levels....About 38% of LA's labor force is foreign born, but 63% of the trades workforce specifically is foreign born."

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."