Cambridge, Mass. -- The annual State of the Nation’s Housing report, produced by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University, shows that America’s housing has become increasingly scarce and increasingly expensive.
Since the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies first released its seminal State of the Nation’s Housing report in 1988, more than 40 million housing units have been built in the U.S., the country has added 27 million new households, and last year’s national homeownership rate of 63.9% was very close to the 64% of the late 1980s. At the same time, however, the number of Americans burdened by housing costs has risen by nearly 14 million households over the last 30 years, the number of households with student loan debt has nearly doubled, and the gap between black and white homeownership has widened.