In the Media

Over the past decade, the cost of shelter has risen sharply compared with everything else. Last year, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that 47 per cent of people who rent in America are “cost-burdened”, meaning they spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing.

“Many people that are typically thought of as potential first-time homebuyers—higher income, highly educated young and middle-aged adults—are increasingly likely to be renters,” says Alexander Hermann, a Research Analyst at the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Many Americans, already struggling to find a home they can afford to buy, are increasingly at pains to find a place they can afford to rent. Tightening that squeeze: An influx of middle-class renters that is pushing up prices in much of the country.

In one of the best decades the American economy has ever recorded, families were bled dry.

Being able to find and afford rental housing in the U.S. is becoming increasingly challenging for many Americans – especially among middle-income earners, a new report finds.

According to a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, there's been a significant increase in middle-income renters who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing.

Almost half of the renters in US spend more than 30 percent of income on housing, report shows, part of a global trend.

Housing costs are slipping out of reach for the middle class in smaller and medium-size cities across the U.S., the latest sign that the affordability crisis that started on the coasts is moving inland, according to research released on Friday by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

A new report today from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies on the nation’s rental markets suggests the ongoing affordable housing crisis has evolved, with a growing number of well-to-do renters increasingly putting a strain on low-income, and increasingly middle-income, renters.

With higher-income households driving much of the growth in rental demand since 2010, the new housing supply has been concentrated at the upper end of the market, squeezing middle-income Americans, according to a report released today from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.