Houses were once plentiful across the U.S. Now half of cities don't have enough homes.
CBSN
America's big coastal cities are known for their pricey real estate, driven by zoning restrictions and inadequate supply of homes. Now those problems are increasingly bedeviling once-affordable towns and cities across the U.S., a new study finds.
More than half of the nation's metropolitan regions had an undersupply of homes in 2019, a sharp increase from one-third of cities in the 2012, according to a recent analysis from housing policy group Up For Growth. The nation is short 3.8 million homes to meet its housing needs — double the number from 2012 — Up for Growth found.
But the lack of housing is spreading beyond large coastal metropolises like San Francisco and New York and into communities across the U.S. As a result, home prices have surged even in smaller cities while exacerbating inequality, with high housing costs shutting out many people of color, young adults and low-income workers from the dream of homeownership.
