Affordability Crunch: Years in the Making

Fisher: “Demand for rental housing has greatly outstripped supply, rapidly pushing vacancies down and rents up even as incomes fell.”

WASHINGTON, DC—The seeds of the current affordability crisis in rental housing were sown nearly a decade ago, and will require sustained high levels of new construction to provide relief. Those are among the conclusions drawn by the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Research Institute for Housing America in a new report that traces the crisis back to at least the Great Recession.

“Demand for rental housing has greatly outstripped supply, rapidly pushing vacancies down and rents up even as incomes fell,” says Lynn Fisher, executive director of RIHA and VP for research and economics at MBA. “The supply is still trying to catch up with the demand.”