In the Media

The number of Americans over age 80 will double, to 12 million, during the next 20 years, and, by 2035, 1 out of 3 U.S. households will be headed by someone north of 65, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Since public housing caps were imposed, the ability of working people to afford housing has diminished. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies cites a 2017 study showing that there were “37 affordable and available units for every 100 extremely low-income renters,” and “58 units affordable and available for every 100 households’’ of very low income renters.

In its latest report on rent trends in the United States, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies said the federal response to rising costs has fallen short for years.

According to Abbe Will, a researcher at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, there was a 5% growth in the market for home improvement last year. That’s because it’s been easier for Americans to fix what they’ve got, rather than buy.

“Boston appears to be bucking the national trend with slowing increases in rents that seems clearly linked to the substantial increase in the City’s supply of new apartments in recent years,” Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, said in a statement.

Research shows that the relationship between solo-living baby boomers and high housing costs is more complicated than the prevailing narrative.

Instead of building equity, many millennials are renting or living with their parents. In 2018 more than 1 in 3 renter households was headed by someone under age 35 vs. just 1 in 10 homeowner households, according to recent research by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

New apartments today overwhelmingly target higher-income renters. The median rent for a new unit is now $1,620 a month, 78 percent higher than the median rent nationwide, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (the gulf between those figures has been widening).

A lot of us would welcome a little more space at home: that’s partly why Americans spent $30 billion on room additions and exterior add-ons like decks, porches, and garages in 2017, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices. They have to accept it’s hypocritical to say that you don’t like density but are worried about climate change. They have to internalize the lesson that if they want their children to have a stable financial future, they have to make space. They are going to have to change.