“Lack of affordability defines both the for-sale and the for-rent housing markets.” That’s one of the first lines in a report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies out today. Home prices are high, rents are high, and people are feeling the pain. We’re seeing that in the number of cost-burdened households, defined as those who spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
From 2019 to 2022, the number of cost-burdened homeowners rose by 3 million, to a total of 19.7 million. That means nearly one in four homeowner households “are now stretched worryingly thin,” the report states, of which, 27.4% are ages 65 and up. More concerning, it was households that earned less than $30,000 a year that “constituted over half of the growth in cost-burdened homeowners from 2019 to 2022.” Not to mention, 9 million homeowners are severely cost-burdened, defined as those spending more than half of their income on housing.
