Published by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, America’s Rental Housing: Homes for a Diverse Nation reviews current conditions and the outlook for rental housing demand, renter demographics, rental housing production, the spatial patterns of rental housing and affordability challenges.

A March 8, 2006 press conference to release the report focused on the declining stock of affordable housing. According to the report, some 200,000 rental housing units are demolished or otherwise removed from the housing stock every year, nearly twice as many as are produced annually by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and other initiatives.

NMHC/NAA’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Jim Arbury, participated in the media briefing and used the opportunity to urge policymakers to adopt a more balanced housing policy that more explicitly values rental housing. He also highlighted the need for exit tax relief to encourage owners of older properties to sell those communities to new owners who can modernize them and preserve them as part of the nation’s affordable housing stock.

The report is the cornerstone of a new research agenda on rental housing at Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies.

Click here to read the Harvard report.

Click here to read Jim Arbury's remarks.