Is It Time for America to Bring Back the Boarding House?
As the U.S. begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and work towards economic recovery, one of the major economic issues to watch in the months and years ahead is housing. The pandemic has in some ways increased economic inequality, and trends in housing show it. Many high earners are using favorable mortgage interest rates and record household savings during the pandemic to buy from unusually low inventories of homes, creating fierce competition among buyers and driving home prices higher. Meanwhile, low-income workers have relied on government stimulus, rent assistance programs, and eviction moratoriums for nearly a year and a half just to keep a roof over their headsand many of those programs will likely run out in the next few months.