The U.S. Housing Crisis Brewing
According to the annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, like the broader economy, the housing market is split on divergent tracks. While one group of households is rushing to buy homes with savings built during the pandemic, another is being locked out of ownership as prices march upward — and those who bore the brunt of pandemic job losses remain saddled with debt and in danger of losing their homes. For the past year, lower-income tenants have relied heavily on government support to pay their monthly bills. These measures have helped — about one-third of renters used unemployment or stimulus payments to pay rent at some point during the pandemic — but the majority of renters still had to borrow or draw on savings to cover bills, leaving them less able to weather future emergencies, much less save for personal investments or a down payment for a home. The result is that even with a patchwork of federal, state and local eviction moratoriums, and some $5 trillion in federal relief that included expanded unemployment benefits and tens of billions in housing assistance, roughly 7 million tenants were behind on rent earlier this year. With savings tapped out and unemployment benefits set to lapse, the financial damage to low-income households remains severe enough that they will need more support if they’re to recover with the broader economy, the Harvard report said.
Tags : INTERNATIONAL investments Government unemployment tenants USA financial US Housing Harvard Housing Studies