Prof. Albert Saiz discusses how older Americans are impacting the real estate market in the Greater Boston area. “There’s a mismatch now,” saysSaiz. “As people age in place, these households tend to be two people or sometimes one person in maybe a three- or four-bedroom home. Since they’re not downsizing as we expected, we have a huge, huge need for bigger homes to host younger families.”
A new study conducted by Prof. Albert Saiz and his colleagues has found “for housing access to improve in Mexico, financial support such as mortgages or subsidies, along with greater buy-in from local governments and the private sector, is key,” writes Kylie Madry for Reuters.
Researchers from MIT, the University of Southern California, Redfin, and the National Bureau of Economic Research found that property listings with flood risks were less likely to be looked at and bid on by potential homebuyers, reports Leslie Kaufman for Bloomberg.
A new study by Prof. Albert Saiz has found that Mexican housing must become denser and better planned in order to provide adequate living options to lower-income parts of the population, reports Kylie Madry for Reuters. “According to Saiz, the prevalence of self-built, one-family homes is a bigger problem than growing numbers of ‘digital nomads’ – remote workers living in Mexico but earning disproportionately large salaries from abroad – which have been the focus of criticism since the coronavirus pandemic took many jobs online,” writes Madry.
Prof. Devin Michelle Bunten and University of Pennsylvania Prof. Amy Hillier published an analysis on how to bring more queer and intersectional approaches to fair housing, reports Rachel M. Cohen for Vox. “The legality of private discrimination against most household structures mirrors the skepticism of nonnormative housing long espoused by public policy,” Bunten and Hillier write.
A new report co-authored by Lecturer Eric Robsky Huntley has found that tenants in predominately nonwhite neighborhoods are nearly twice as likely to face eviction than renters in mostly white areas, reports Chris Lisinski for WBUR. “Our takeaway here is that we really have to act now,” says Huntley. “Ensuring an equitable recovery is a critical first step toward securing safe and stable homes for all.”
Lecturer Eric Robsky Huntley has found that eviction rates for communities of color in Massachusetts were nearly twice as high as eviction rates for predominately white neighborhoods, reports Katie Johnson for The Boston Globe. “In neighborhoods made up predominately of people of color, landlords filed 30 evictions for every 1,000 renters, while majority-white neighborhoods had 18.5 evictions filed for every 1,000 renters,” writes Johnson.
A new analysis by lecturer Eric Robsky Huntley finds that communities of color were hit harder by new eviction filings than white residents after Massachusetts’s eviction moratorium ended in October 2020, reports Adam Reilly for GBH. “Huntley also found that there were nearly twice as many eviction filings per renter in predominately nonwhite communities as in predominantly white ones – and, in certain municipalities, the disparity was even greater,” writes Reilly.
Lecturer Malia Lazu writes for Banker & Tradesman about the future of the Boston business community as Mayor Michelle Wu takes office. “At the end of the day, Mayor Wu’s priorities are not that different from those of the business community: transportation infrastructure that brings people to job centers, stronger schools that create pathways to jobs, climate resiliency that keeps city infrastructure stable in the future, affordable housing and a diverse workforce, among others,” writes Lazu.
A new report by graduate student Ben Walker examining eviction filings in the City of Boston finds that “from Feb. 28, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021, evictions were filed at more than twice the rate in neighborhoods where a majority of renters are people of color than in neighborhoods where most renters are white,” reports Chris Lisinski for WBUR.
Senior lecturer Edward Golding speaks with Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick and Joe Weisenthal about a new study he co-authored, which finds that Black Americans pay more for their homes.
Bloomberg reporter Yalman Onaran writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that Black homeowners pay more over the life of a home loan, hurting their ability to save for retirement. “The biggest reason for the gap is the risk-based pricing found in most U.S. mortgages, which disadvantage Black borrowers because they tend to make smaller down payments and have lower credit scores,” writes Onaran.
Bloomberg reporter Kriston Capps finds that evictions disproportionately impact Black renters in the City of Boston. Capps writes that the “research shows that communities of color — eviction hubs even under normal times — are already bearing the disproportionate burden of the pandemic housing crisis.”
In an article for Forbes, Champaign Williams highlights a new app developed by two MIT graduates that, “connects millennials and college students in search of temporary housing with baby boomers who have excess space and could use the extra cash.”
In an article for the BBC News, Jane Wakefield highlights a gesture-controlled transforming unit designed for small homes by MIT researchers. "We need to think of technology-enabled furniture as a platform for integrating other technology because in a small apartment it is not practical to put in conventional systems," explains Principal Research Scientist Kent Larson.