America's housing system was radically unprepared for coronavirus [View all]

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The U.S. had a severe housing affordability crisis long before coronavirus hit. In 2018, close to half of all renters spent more than a third of their income on rent. Home prices are rising faster than wages in roughly 80 percent of American metro regions. Rural America has seen steep increases in housing costs — as well as in the number of households spending at least half of their income on housing. And all this was before we began seeing record numbers of businesses shuttering and workers being laid off in the wake of Covid-19.

The combination of coronavirus and America’s unaffordable housing system has resulted in a disquieting paradox: At the same time that public health officials are warning that staying at home, away from others, is essential to preventing the rapid transmission of coronavirus, huge swaths of Americans are finding it harder and harder to come up with the money needed to keep a roof over their heads.

“For far too long, policymakers at all levels of government have failed to provide decent-quality, stable, and affordable housing to millions of Americans” writes Jenny Schuetz, a fellow at the Brooking Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. “In COVID-19, we’re only starting to see the devastating consequences of that failure.” A few weeks ago, Schuetz wrote a prescient piece outlining how unprepared America’s housing system was to handle the economic fallout of coronavirus. The way events have unfolded over the last few weeks have proved her diagnosis correct.

I spoke to Schuetz to better understand why America’s housing system was so radically unprepared for coronavirus, how the situation today could end up far worse than 2008, what a comprehensive policy response would look like, and more.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/americas-housing-system-was-radically-unprepared-for-coronavirus/ar-BB11GUS3?li=BBnbfcN