The housing crisis Ms. Price saw in Atlanta is ongoing across the country. According to the United States, about 6.5 million single-family homes are short National Association of Realtors, For more than a decade, houses were not built fast enough to keep pace with population growth, a trend that was further exacerbated by the pandemic. During this time, demand for larger homes increased even as construction slowed, first hindered by public health restrictions, then by labor shortages and supply-chain issues that made everything from copper pipes to carpet rarer and more expensive. Went.
The number of affordable homes has dropped: only 10 percent of new homes cost less than $300,000 By Q4 2022Even though mortgage rates have nearly doubled over the past year.
These challenges have a cascading effect that has driven up rents, as well as: Moody’s Analytics got The average tenant now spends more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
“If you look at rental vacancy rates, they’re very, very low,” said Whitney Airgood-Obrecki, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “It’s really hard for people to find an affordable place to move. It’s extremely tight, especially for low-income renters.
As Ms. Price experienced up close, a growing number of municipalities — including Atlanta — have emerged from the pandemic only to find a full-blown housing crisis on their doorstep. Lawmakers are calling for more regulation of short-term rentals, with many trying to discourage “professional hosts” as opposed to homeowners who are renting out part or all of their primary home.
Ingrid Gold Allen, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University and faculty director of the university’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, said policies should be nuanced enough to differentiate between the two categories of renters.
“Airbnb can be a really useful tool for a lot of people, for homeowners who are probably struggling to make their mortgage payments, or even renters who are looking to make some occasional income.” want and want to rent out their units while they are on vacation,” he said. “Those are all kinds of uses that don’t really restrict the long-term supply of housing.”
