2 minute readColor-coded, the numbers tell a story of housing in America, sharply delineated, stratified, and divisible among haves who are gaining, and have-nots losing more with each passing day.
In its top layers, livability in all its wondrous dimensions – indoor-outdoor living and dining, human-scaled lighting, air exchange and room comfort, water purity, noise reduction, a yard, a walkable community – are the must-haves of well-being that, spurred by dirt-cheap mortgage interest rates, have galvanized both for-sale and for-rent single-family new home demand.
But below those layers, home each day means having to try to pick which bill one can’t afford not to pay, or else.
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies annual analysis,
That can’t happen when a chasm – widening by step-change measures year after year, and table upon table – pertains not just to fair, healthy, decent shelter, but, rather, to the capacity to cope.
The pandemic has highlighted how vital affordable, good-quality, and well-connected housing is to health and well-being. Indeed, the Household Pulse Surveys in the first quarter of this year show a clear relationship between the stress of being behind on housing payments and the incidence of other hardships. For example, more than three-quarters of households that were unable to cover their rents or mortgages also struggled to pay other expenses. Some 60 percent of households in arrears experienced feelings of depression or anxiety, while 35 percent reported being in fair or poor health. Many of these households may have little recourse to get help with these health issues, with a fifth having no public or private health insurance.
The tale of two markets in housing is at the crux of housing’s opportunity – rather, the leaders of homebuilding, development, apartment construction, property management, real estate investment, as well as manufacturers, distributors, and their partners – to lead to solutions that expand and improve the sector’s role in helping to knit more resilient societal fabric in the years ahead.
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