Housing in the United States

Housing as shelter is one of the "basic needs" of humans, offering protection against the elements. It also provides a place of privacy away from the public eye where daily activities can take place. Residents often have personal attachment to a house, making it a home. A home's location, style and access to schools, parks, and other amenities can align a household to a greater community to reinforce cultural or religious bonds. These characteristics can also reinforce residential segregation and unequal access to amenities. Housing is also important to developers, builders, lenders, realtors, investors, architects, and other specialized professions and trades. These groups view housing as a commodity for financial gain. In 2016, housing costs in two thirds of the United States exceeded wage growth. Housing prices have risen dramatically since the Covid pandemic and are unlikely to change anytime soon. In January 2020, the median home price was $290,499 – nearly 45% lower than the median home price in May 2023. Recent trends also show that more homeowners are leveraging accumulated equity to make all‑cash purchases. Between 2023 and 2024, approximately 26 % of U.S. buyers used home equity to buy their next home outright, while in Dane County, Wisconsin, 17 % of homes sold in May 2025 were purchased with cash—underscoring the growing role of equity in sustaining demand despite rising prices. For households earning 30% of the county's median income, most counties in the United States do not have rental housing considered affordable to at least half that income segment (one-third of 30% of median). == Construction and quality ==

Wood framing is widely used in home construction in the United States, accounting for 90% of new houses in 2019. Concrete is used to build a foundation, usually with either a crawl space, or basement included. Interiors usually have drywall. Roofing often consists of asphalt shingles, although steel, and tile materials are also used. Wood-frame construction in the United States is more cost effective than masonry, in part because bricks typically must be shipped farther and labor costs are higher; however, it is perceived to be flimsy in comparison to typical European construction. The federal government and insurance agencies have tried to promote concrete-frame construction and other basic techniques for resisting extreme weather events, but with little success: a 2017 report by McKinsey concluded that "the productivity of construction remains stuck at the same level as 80 years ago". Increasingly, some property insurers will no longer offer home insurance policies in regions where houses are often destroyed by weather events such as wildfires or hurricanes. The typical age of a home varies by state, with a national median of 39 years. Many of the 160,000 condominium buildings in the United States do not have sufficient funds to carry out major repairs. In March 2025, spring home-building construction starts fell 11.4% from February amid tariff increases on materials including steel, glass, and lumber, according to a March data report from the U.S. Census Bureau Index of Economic Activity. == Supply ==

briefly focused the country's attention on the structural integrity of its housing. There are about 135 million homes in the United States as of 2016. Housing researchers generally conclude that the supply of housing in the United States is too low to meet demand, resulting in an affordability crisis. Among the renting population, nearly half pay more than 30% of their income toward rent. These include regulations such as single-family zoning, minimum parking requirements, and height restriction laws that limit the density of new residences within a municipality or increase the expense and difficulty of construction. New construction often requires a public comment process, which arose in response to the excesses of urban renewal in the 1960s. While intended to broaden community participation in local development, this process is often dominated by a socioeconomically advantaged subset of the neighborhood: in Massachusetts, for example, "the individuals who participate in community meetings on new housing developments differ starkly from the broader population. They are older, whiter, longtime residents, and more likely to be homeowners. They overwhelmingly oppose the development of new housing[. ... T]hese forums are dominated by an unrepresentative and privileged group of neighborhood defenders." These meetings are often seen as a manifestation of nimbyism, in which existing residents, especially those who own property, leverage the regulatory process in order to stymie new construction. Public housing in St. Louis was symbolic of the US attitude to public housing. The Pruitt–Igoe site remains largely vacant. Federal efforts at public housing began in the 1930s, with a series of New Deal efforts culminating in the Housing Act of 1937. This created the United States Housing Authority as a centralized agency with the power to disburse funds, while the work of building and maintaining public housing projects was largely devolved onto state and municipal public housing authorities. From the outset, public housing was tied to the notion of "slum clearance", and the 1937 Act required that for every unit of public housing that was built, another unit had to be eliminated. Additionally, to protect the commodified housing market, the 1937 Act, and the 1949 Act that followed it, effectively restricted public housing to low-income households, The fraction of US households receiving public or subsidized housing is far lower than the fraction in Western Europe. Commodification Economists have noted increasing ownership of housing units by investors keeping the units vacant or renting them to the exclusion of traditional homebuyers. Investors bought about one of every seven U.S. homes in the first quarter of 2021, up from the prior three quarters, in which they bought closer to 1 in 10 homes. == Homelessness ==

In 2014, approximately 1.5 million homeless people resided in shelters. , the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported there were roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night, or 0.17% of the population. Recent spikes in the homeless population include a 44% increase in Seattle in 2017 and 16% in the city of Los Angeles in 2019. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were around 771,480 homeless people in the United Stateson a given night, or about 23 of every 10,000 people. Homelessness increased from 2016 to 2020, along with deaths among the homeless population. There is some geographic variation in the rate of homelessness, which is correlated with the cost and availability of housing. Popular alternative explanations such as rates of mental illness or drug addiction do not explain the observed geographic variation in homelessness rates, nor do differences in regional climates. == See also ==