In the Media

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.

Architects across the country have noticed older clients are increasingly taking on new construction and major renovation projects. It is partly because there are more households led by people 65 or older, with a million added nationwide every year between 2014 to 2019, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

A recent JCHS study found that wealthier Black households were given higher mortgage rates than low-income white households. "We have some deep problems in the mortgage market," Raheem Hanifa, the research analyst who wrote the study.

Current mortgage affordability brought by low interest rates, however welcome, comes with a caveat, Alex Hermann of JCHS said. “Higher home prices are often going to require a larger down payment, which is often the biggest barrier to accessing homeownership, especially for first-time buyers with low or moderate incomes."

About a fifth of renters in single-family homes and small apartment buildings are behind on their rent, and those kinds of buildings tend to be owned by mom and pop landlords, said Alexander Hermann, a research analyst at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Even before the crisis, more than half of Black and Latino people were housing cost-burdened — defined as spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing — compared to 42 percent of Asian and white households, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Even before the pandemic, more than half of Black and Hispanic renters were cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The pandemic has only made these disparities worse, JCHS found.

Black and Hispanic renters are "twice as likely as white renter households to be behind on housing payments and twice as likely to report being at risk of eviction," said Sophia Wedeen of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Even before last year, about 11 million households — one in four US renters — were spending more than half their pretax income on housing, and overcrowding was on the rise.

“We think that the increase in spending last year, a good chunk of it was a surge in what we would call DIY projects or small remodeling and repair projects,” said Abbe Will, a researcher with Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.