Boston, MA, and Washington, DC, are symbolic cities of the United States, and their housing crisis is an invitation to reexamine the economic predicament countrywide. According to the Data USA 2020 Census, Boston had only 35.5% and Washington 42.5% of the housing units occupied by their owner, meaning that less than half of their population cannot afford a property. These percentages of owner-occupation descend from the national average of 64.4%, highlighting the national struggle.
In 2020 the average property value in Boston was $581,200, larger 2.53 times than the national average, $229,800. Considering that Boston’s median annual income is $76,298, 16% more than the median annual income of $64,994 across the entire United States. Yet, there is still no matching button for the lack of property ownership accessibility. Besides, 18% of Boston’s population, for whom poverty status is determined as living in poverty status, is more elevated than the national average of 12.8%.
Likewise, in 2020, the median property value in Washington, DC, increased to $618,100, differing from the national average. And even though in Washington, DC, the household median annual income is $90,842, more than the median yearly income in the United States, 15.5% of the population live below the poverty line exceeding the national average of 12.8%. Once again, portraying the discrepancy in access to housing ownership despite the high household income.
Furthermore, the disparity between housing ownership and renting affects some demographics more formidably than others. For example, according to Harvard University’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing 2022 report, “the cost-burdened shares were up far more for renters (2.6 percentage points) than for homeowners (1.0 percentage points), and more for Black households (2.4 percentage points) than for white (1.6 percentage points), Asian (0.8 percentage point), and Hispanic households (0.6 percentage point).”
And although the lowest-income families continued to have the highest cost-burden rate, the share for households earning between $30,000 and $45,000 increased the most — up 4.2 percentage points in 2019–2020, to 46.4 percent. This brings us to conclude that problematically, housing is a crisis mishandled and constantly expanding nationwide and across demographics.
Previously posted in Medium by Sara Valentina Alvarez Echavarria:
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