In the Media

Among its many findings, the JCHS’s “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2020” report revealed that Black households were the most likely to be behind on rent payments, followed by Hispanic or Latino, Asian, multiracial and finally white households.

According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than 20 million American households were "rent-burdened" in 2019, defined as paying more than 30% of their income toward rent.

Christopher E. Herbert, director for the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said though Biden’s plans for a universal voucher program may be costly and difficult to pass in Congress, it would have a “substantial and significant difference.”

But housing advocates also say these investments aren’t expected to solve the housing shortages for lower and even middle-income earners in these expensive metro areas. “It’s going to take a much larger investment of resources to address the problem at a scale that’s needed,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

About half of all renters are "cost burdened," meaning they pay more than 30% of their income toward housing, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. After paying their rent, people who earn less than $15,000 a year have about $410 left each month for food, transportation, health care and other essentials, the study noted.

According to the report's finding, the pandemic's economic consequences have hit renters particularly hard, along with Latino and Black households.

A study just released by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies analyzed the surge of vacancies in apartments, showing that the vacancies are concentrated in the urban centers of the major cities, but that the suburban rentals are retaining their tenants rather well.

"Supply appears to be the tightest for low and moderate cost homes," said Alexander Hermann of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, an author of a recent report on the current housing scene.

“Housing is a cause and consequence of our racial disparities,’’ Center Managing Director Chris Herbert said. “We dug ourselves a hole over the course of a couple hundred years. It’s going to take generations to eliminate the homeownership gap, but if we could close the gap by even a couple of percentage points, that would impact hundreds of thousands of families.’’

“The remodeling market is bouncing back from the initial shocks caused by the pandemic, as homeowners continue to spend significant time in their homes and are adapting it for work, school and leisure,” says Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.