Victoria Gonchar
With record homelessness, rising rents, and shrinking supply, more underserved Americans are looking to collective housing solutions, otherwise known as social housing, which may just be the answer to the problem.
The American Housing Market Under Strain
It’s no secret that the American housing market is in turmoil. Even after adjusting for inflation, the average cost of a home today is roughly twice what it was fifty years ago. This leaves many Americans reporting that they either cannot afford a home, or can only manage housing costs by living paycheck to paycheck.
Renters are also not immune to this inability to afford housing. A renter now needs to earn about $28 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment without being cost-burdened, and more than $33 an hour for a two-bedroom. Women and marginalized groups are especially likely to be unable to afford a home in this climate.
As of 2022, most US workers made less than $28 per hour; most US women made less than $25 per hour, and most people of color in the US made less than $24 per hour. This means most Americans are likely priced out of housing unless they have another working adult to share costs with. Raising a family on a single income, or even living alone comfortably, is now beyond the reach of most US workers.
The gender-based pay gap has been shrinking for decades, but it is still a major issue for housing affordability. Though American women now complete more formal education on average than men, the median wage for American women is about 16% lower than the median wage for men. The wage gap appears to grow as workers get older, with 18-25-year-old women being paid about 95% of what their male colleagues are paid, but women in their 40s being paid just half what their male colleagues receive in some industries.
One major reason for this appears to be that women, on average, perform more unpaid caregiving labor for children, elders, and spouses than men do. One 2025 study found that, if all the care giving labor done by women was paid at market rates, American women would collectively be paid an additional $638 billion per year. Yet, because child care, elder care, and domestic labor are typically unpaid duties, that labor does not contribute to women’s financial wealth or ability to afford housing.
The consequences of this disparity over time can be staggering: in one study, men with MBAs were found to be paid almost twice as much as women with MBAs 13 years after graduation. Men’s ability to put in extensive overtime on the job while women cared for children, elders, and spouses was believed to be a major factor.
Women are also much more likely to raise children alone, often facing financial costs of child-rearing that now exceed $20,000 per child per year in the US. One analysis found that 77% of single-mother renters are cost-burdened, and one in two single mothers spend over half of their income on housing.
Race-related wealth gaps are much larger than gender pay gaps. Due to the lasting economic effects of slavery, segregation, and discriminatory school funding and hiring practices, a 2022 economic survey found that the average Black American family held only 16% of the wealth of the average white American family. Hispanic and Native American families fared little better.
This disparity arises from the simple fact that, for almost all of American history, people of color were heavily discriminated against or fully banned from holding certain jobs, attending certain schools, and living in certain neighborhoods.
Even the benefits of highly affordable home loans and free education from the GI Bill were denied to many veterans of color, with many banks refusing to honor the promised home loans and many schools refusing them admission. The American system of funding public schools based on local property taxes has perpetuated the historical burden of financial inequality by ensuring that children growing up in poor neighborhoods receive underfunded education.
To this day, the correlation between race, poverty, and underfunded education in the US is extremely strong. An unexplained pay gap between white workers and workers of color, now much larger than the gender-based wage gap, also persists to this day. In fact, A 2022 study of hiring around the world found that racial discrimination in hiring does not appear to have improved since the 1990s.
All of these policies have worked together to create the current situation, where the average white family controls more than five times the wealth of the average Black, Hispanic, or Native American family.
The 21st century has also been the least affordable century on record, with costs for both homes and higher educationoften falling between $100,000 and $500,000. That means that young people whose families didn’t already have hundreds of thousands of dollars of generational wealth lined up have been at a serious disadvantage when it comes to acquiring the necessary education and property ownership for a secure future.
Lack of generational wealth is a major reason for housing insecurity, including the potential inability to afford down payments on a home, and the inability to afford rent or mortgage payments in the event of emergency expenses or disruption to employment.
Approximately half of US renters spend over 30% of their income on housing. This burden tends to fall disproportionately on people of color: 57% of Black and 53% of Hispanic renter households are cost-burdened. Overall, the nation’s housing costs have outpaced incomes – leaving tens of millions of families, especially women-led and minority-led households, narrowly scraping by. Cost-burdened people are at a higher risk of homelessness in the event of financial disruptions like illness, unemployment, and rent hikes.
The Rise of “Vacant Wealth” and Corporate Ownership
One contributor to the affordability crisis may be the encroachment of corporations and wealthy investors into the housing market. As of 2022, about 1 in 20 US homes were classified as second or vacation homes (roughly 6.5 million homes, or 4.6% of the housing stock). These properties are often owned by wealthy buyers and concentrated in expensive states like California, New York, and Florida. Many of these properties tend to remain empty most of the time.
This increase in valuable yet vacant homes is sometimes referred to as the “vacant wealth” phenomenon. In 2024, at the same time 6.5 million US homes stood empty most of the time, almost 800,000 Americans were unhoused, risking violence and death from exposure due to inability to afford housing costs.
Corporate housing ownership has also grown rapidly. Roughly 4% of homes nationwide are now owned by corporate entities. Recently, in certain markets, approximately one-quarter of single-family homes have been purchased by investors instead of families who are seeking a place to live. Together, these trends suggest that nearly 12 million U.S. homes – almost 1 in 10 – are either kept vacant or owned by investors who do not live in them.
In both scenarios, these units are not used as primary residences by their owners. These investors often leave houses unused, or consider rental payments from tenants to be a source of passive income. In these situations, renters do not obtain generational wealth from home ownership, while those who are already wealthy enough to own multiple residential properties accumulate even more wealth from rental payments.
These numbers continue to rise: investors purchased 1.2 million homes in 2024, slightly more than the annual average of 1.1 million in prior years. These trends often leave underserved communities unable to attain home ownership, with serious long-term consequences for housing security, financial security, and generational wealth.
Record Homelessness and Widening Instability
After a brief decline during COVID-era eviction protections, homelessness has surged to historic highs. There are approximately 771,480 Americans experiencing homelessness on a single night in the US – this represents an 18% increase in just one year, and the highest nationwide number ever recorded.
Furthermore, nearly 150,000 children were counted as homeless in 2024, a 33% jump from the year before. This sharp rise reflects a growing affordability crisis that increasingly affects families with children, not just individual adults. In fact, family homelessness (often involving single mothers with children) rose 39% between 2023 and 2024.
Not surprisingly, the burden of homelessness is not evenly distributed. People of color continue to be over represented among unhoused populations. Black Americans, for example, make up only about 12% of the US population but accounted for nearly 32% of people experiencing homelessness in 2024. Similarly, Hispanic/Latino people comprised about 30% of the homeless population, far above their share of the general population.
These disparities show how homelessness and housing insecurity are not individual failings: people’s odds of becoming homeless are very strongly affected by the color of their skin and the generational wealth they were or were not born into.
Living Together: A Return to an Older Survival Strategy
As housing costs soar, many Americans are coping by returning to shared living arrangements. In 2024, the number of homeowners who took in unrelated roommates nearly tripled. Additionally, more than half of young adults under 25 still live with their parents, as do about 18% of adults aged 25-34 (20% of men and 15% of women in that age group).
Some health experts point to often-overlooked benefits of these shared living arrangements. Studies have found that living alone can heighten risks of memory decline, depression, heart disease, and other ailments. From this perspective, having others in the home provides daily social interaction that can improve mental health and even longevity.
However, these benefits don’t fix the core problem of the modern American housing market. For decades, most Americans afford less and less housing with each passing year. This trend cannot continue forever. Where does it stop, and what is going to stop it?
Economic analysts warn that the consolidation of property ownership by corporations and wealthy individuals increases long-term generational inequality. Renters do not build generational wealth through home ownership, and instead pay a large portion of their income to already-wealthy property owners in exchange for shelter. Younger and less affluent people (disproportionately women and minorities) struggle to obtain stable housing and build equity.
This dynamic has arguably played a role in society-threatening problems like dropping birth rates. As of January 2026, 70% of Americans told surveyors that having children is unaffordable for them. It is impossible to divorce that number from the steadily rising costs of housing.
In short, millions of Americans are sharing housing space out of necessity – and it is unclear when this trend of average people affording less and less housing with their paychecks will end.
A Structural Shortage: Millions of Homes Missing
Beyond rising prices and investor dominance, the US faces a severe and persistent shortage of low-cost homes. It is estimated that the US lacks 7.1 million affordable and available rentals for extremely low-income households – leaving just 35 affordable homes for every 100 renters who need them. Some analysts put the gap even higher when accounting for “doubled-up” families and those cycling in and out of homelessness. Decades of under-building, restrictive zoning, and dwindling federal housing investments have all contributed to this deficit.
Research shows that cities which allow more multi-unit housing or accessory dwelling units tend to experience slower rent growth and even reduced homelessness over time. For example, after Minneapolis reformed its zoning in 2018 to permit more multifamily housing, its rent increases notably slowed and its homelessness count dropped in the following years. This underscores the importance of expanding the supply of affordable homes. Making it easier to build apartments, duplexes, and other low-cost units can alleviate pressure on rents and help keep vulnerable people housed.
Urban planners say that building high-density housing reduces housing costs, supports local businesses and neighborhood walkability, and builds a tax base to fund infrastructure like public transit and public schools that all residents benefit from.
Social Housing: An Old Idea Finding New Momentum
In response to rising housing instability, more Americans are turning their attention to social housing– a model that treats housing as a public good rather than a commodity. Social housing refers to community-owned, nonprofit, or publicly owned residential buildings.
Instead of being bought, and flipped for profit, these homes exist to provide stable, safe, and affordable shelter that supports the well-being of their occupants. Social housing asks a simple question that is often overlooked in the modern market: What if homes were built to house people– not to enrich investors?
Around the world, social housing takes many forms: resident cooperatives, nonprofit-owned complexes, and municipally-owned communities. These models typically offer rents well below market rates and prohibit profit-driven resale, ensuring long-term affordability. Many social housing communities also incorporate additional benefits. These features can include solar power to reduce energy costs, community gardens, shared work spaces, and common areas that promote a strong sense of connection among neighbors.
Importantly, social housing isn’t just for marginalized communities: it’s for anyone who wants their housing, and their neighborhood, to be governed by residents with the goal of providing housing security and quality of life, not maximizing profit for people selling homes in the area. By uncoupling shelter from profit, social housing communities can address the housing affordability crisis while also improving residents’ quality of life.