In the Media

In 2019, according to Harvard’s 2020 State of the Nation’s Housing report, 37.1 million households — or roughly 30 percent of all American households — were “housing cost burdened,” meaning that they spent 30 percent or more of their income on housing.

“We need both more rental assistance as well as more funding to expand the supply of affordable housing,” said Jennifer Molinsky, senior research associate at the Harvard center.

As the aging of the nation accelerates, most communities need to do much more to become age-friendly, said Jennifer Molinsky, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.

“The housing stock has not been growing as fast as demand,” says Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Center. “Construction has been so low for so long that we’ve seen kind of a constriction of opportunities to buy homes.”

As noted in the Joint Center for Housing Studies report, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2020, “Over half of Black and Hispanic renter households were cost burdened going into the pandemic, compared to 42% of Asian and white households.”

2020 was a record-breaking year for home improvements. Harvard University researchers found that Americans spent nearly $420 billion, much of it on do-it-yourself projects.

The event followed the release of the Center’s latest housing report, which found that the home improvement industry has rebounded much more quickly than the US economy in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Total spending on home improvement and repairs climbed an estimated 3% last year to $419 billion, despite a slowdown in the broader U.S. economy, researchers from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies said in a study released Thursday.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 37 million households were cost burdened in 2019, putting over 30% toward rent or mortgage payments, including 17.6 million spending over 50% of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies 2020 State of the Nation’s Housing report.

Wage inequality and flat wage growth are primary culprits in the uneven retirement landscape we now face - and the racial gap in retirement wealth is especially stark. In 2019, the median net wealth - including home equity - of white households over age 65 was $326,170, compared with just $75,190 for Black households, and $63,560 for Latinos, according to analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.