America’s Housing Crisis: How much more wealth extraction will Americans tolerate before demanding fundamental change
The systematic displacement of American families reveals a pattern of wealth extraction that threatens the very foundation of middle-class stability
Note: For detailed source citations and methodology, see Sources & Citations section at the end of this article.
The Squeeze: A Nation Being Priced Out of Home
Sarah Martinez worked two jobs to afford her Oakland apartment. Until her rent jumped $800 in a single year after Blackstone acquired her building. Mark Chen, 72, watched his Chicago property taxes triple over a decade, forcing him to sell the home he’d owned for forty years. The Johnsons, a middle-class family in Phoenix, moved three times in five years, each time pushed further from the city center as their cost of living climbed relentlessly upward.
These aren’t isolated stories. They’re symptoms of a systemic transformation of American housing from a basic human need into a profit-maximization vehicle for the ultra-wealthy.
The Corporate Takeover
After the 2008 housing crash, Wall Street firms like Blackstone swooped in with over $5.5 billion to buy foreclosed homes, often with government encouragement and even federal loan guarantees. What began as opportunistic buying has become systematic market control.
Today, Blackstone owns over 63,000 single-family homes, making it the third-largest institutional landlord in America. But the numbers tell only part of the story. According to MetLife Investment Management projections published in 2022, institutional investors could control up to 40% of all single-family rental homes in the United States by 2030. A staggering concentration of what was once broadly distributed community wealth.
The Business Model: Maximum Extraction
The corporate landlord playbook is brutally simple:
- Acquire properties in bulk, often outbidding individual families
- Raise rents aggressively, pricing out existing tenants
- Cut maintenance costs to maximize cash flow
- Layer on fees for everything from pets to trash pickup
- Resist regulations through massive lobbying expenditures
In Sun Belt markets with high institutional ownership including Tampa, Phoenix, Dallas, Charlotte, and Atlanta, rents have risen dramatically since 2019, far outpacing wage growth in those regions.
See: 📊 ResiClub Analytics: Blackstone’s 63K+ home portfolio, 📊 CNBC: MetLife 2030 projection, 📊 NPR Planet Money: Private equity in neighborhoods, 📊 Norada Real Estate: Blackstone analysis, 📊 MoneyWise: Largest landlord analysis
Young People: Locked Out Before They Start
For millennials and Gen Z, homeownership has become a distant fantasy. When they compete for starter homes, they’re not just bidding against other families, they’re bidding against multi-billion-dollar private equity firms with cash offers and no financing contingencies.
According to Redfin analysis, institutional investors purchase approximately 17% of homes sold annually nationwide, but in key Sun Belt markets, that figure climbs to 25% or higher. These aren’t mom-and-pop investors adding a rental property to their retirement portfolio. These are corporations systematically removing properties from the ownership market and converting them to permanent rentals.
The result? A generation trapped in perpetual rent payments, unable to build equity, unable to establish the financial foundation their parents took for granted.
See: 📊 Redfin: Institutional investor purchase data (cited in NPR reporting), 📊 Zillow Home Value Index: Q3 2025 data
Seniors: Priced Out After a Lifetime
Property taxes have surged in step with home values over the past two decades, creating a cruel trap for elderly homeowners on fixed incomes. As neighborhoods gentrify and property values rise, seniors who’ve lived in their homes for decades suddenly face tax bills they can’t afford.
Research from the National Institutes of Health shows that higher property taxes do force elderly homeowners to move, often from communities where they’ve lived their entire lives. In Illinois, where property tax increases have been particularly acute, rising bills are forcing seniors from their homes even as systems to support them in nursing facilities don’t exist.
While fifteen states and the District of Columbia offer some form of property tax exemptions for seniors, eligibility requirements are often restrictive. Income limits can be as low as $25,000 annually in some localities, and the exemptions rarely keep pace with rapidly rising property values.
The bitter irony: seniors who sacrificed to buy homes as an investment for their retirement now find themselves house-rich and cash-poor, unable to afford the taxes on their own property.
See: 🏛️ NIH/PMC: Property taxes and elderly mobility study, 📊 Central Illinois Proud: Seniors forced out by taxes, 📊 Newsweek: State exemption map, 📊 SmartAsset: Senior property tax guide, 🏛️ NY State: Senior exemption programs
The Middle Class: The Great Displacement
The middle class is experiencing a geographic and economic squeeze unprecedented in modern American history. Rising costs aren’t just making life harder, they’re forcing families to fundamentally restructure their lives.
According to Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, 50% of American renters are now cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. For 12.1 million households, the burden is severe. Over 50% of income going to rent. This leaves families with impossible choices: pay rent or buy food, pay rent or fix the car, pay rent or save for emergencies.
The geographic squeeze is particularly acute. High-wage employment remains heavily concentrated in major metropolitan areas where housing costs have skyrocketed. A software engineer in San Francisco might earn $150,000 annually but spend $60,000 on a modest apartment. Meanwhile, affordable housing exists in areas with limited employment opportunities, creating an impossible choice between income and housing costs.
Middle-class families are responding by moving to less expensive regions. But those areas often lack the job opportunities that sustain middle-class incomes. The USDA Economic Research Service documents this pattern: rural housing is more affordable, but rural wages lag urban wages by 20-30%, and many professional jobs simply don’t exist outside metropolitan areas.
The result is a vicious cycle: families move to afford housing, take lower-paying jobs or long commutes, struggle financially despite “cheaper” housing, and watch their middle-class status evaporate.
See: 🏛️ Harvard JCHS: 50% cost-burdened renters, 🏛️ Harvard JCHS: Analysis, 🏛️ USDA ERS: Rural housing and income data, 🏛️ BLS: Metropolitan employment statistics
The Employment Trap: Why No One Can Earn Their Way Out
The housing crisis doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s compounded by a fundamental restructuring of the American labor market that has eliminated pathways to middle-class stability.
The Disappearance of Good-Paying Jobs
Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows manufacturing employment fell from approximately 17.3 million workers in 2000 to 12.1 million in 2025. A loss of 5.2 million jobs. These weren’t just any jobs; they were positions that paid $60,000-$80,000 annually with full benefits, pensions, and job security.
What replaced them? The service sector added millions of jobs, but at dramatically lower wages. Restaurant workers, retail employees, warehouse staff, and gig economy workers now comprise a much larger share of employment at wages of $30,000-$40,000 annually, often without benefits, sick leave, or retirement plans.
The Gig Economy Trap
Approximately 36% of American workers now participate in gig or contract work, according to Pew Research Center analysis. Companies like Uber, DoorDash, and TaskRabbit frame this as “flexibility” and “entrepreneurship.” The reality is cost-shifting.
A gig worker grossing $40,000 annually might net $25,000 after vehicle expenses, insurance, self-employment taxes, and health insurance. They bear all the risk. No unemployment benefits, no workers’ compensation, no employer-provided healthcare. When they can’t work, they don’t eat.
This isn’t a sustainable path to homeownership or middle-class stability. It’s a race to the bottom.
The Geographic Impossible Choice
Bureau of Labor Statistics data on metropolitan area employment reveals the trap: high-wage employment is heavily concentrated in major metropolitan areas where housing costs have become prohibitive.
A teacher in rural Ohio might afford a house on a $45,000 salary. That same teacher in Seattle would earn $65,000 but face housing costs that consume 60-70% of that income. Moving to affordable areas means accepting lower wages or being shut out of professional employment entirely.
Corporate Consolidation Suppresses Wages
When three companies control 80% of a market, workers lose bargaining power. The American Medical Association documents this pattern in healthcare, but it applies across industries. When you can’t negotiate because there are no alternative employers, wages stagnate.
Economic Policy Institute research shows union membership has declined from 35% of workers in the 1950s to under 11% today. Non-union workers earn 10-20% less than their union counterparts and are far less likely to have employer-provided health insurance or retirement plans.
Coming for the Upper Middle Class
This isn’t just a working-class problem anymore. McKinsey & Company analysis of AI and automation impacts suggests that within a decade, millions of white-collar professional jobs will be automated or drastically reduced.
Law firms that once hired 20 new associates now hire fewer than 10. Accounting firms that needed 50 junior staff now need 25. The tech industry laid off over 260,000 workers in 2023-2024, with many positions eliminated permanently rather than refilled.
Even the professional class that felt secure is discovering they’re one algorithm away from redundancy.
The Compounding Trap
The employment crisis compounds the housing crisis at every level:
- Young people can’t get stable jobs with benefits, so can’t qualify for mortgages, becoming permanent renters
- Middle-aged workers lose manufacturing jobs, take service jobs at 40-50% pay cuts, can’t afford rising rents
- Older workers face age discrimination, can’t compete with younger workers or automation, exhaust savings, risk losing homes
- Gig workers have unstable income, can’t prove consistent earnings for leases, end up in month-to-month situations with no tenant protections
Multiple jobs don’t solve the problem. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows approximately 8 million Americans hold multiple jobs (up from historical norms), yet many still struggle with housing costs. When someone works 60-70 hours weekly across two or three jobs and still faces eviction, the problem isn’t work ethic, it’s a system designed to extract maximum value while providing minimum compensation.
Why Individual Solutions Fail
“Just get a better job” doesn’t work when better jobs don’t exist in your area or require relocation you can’t afford.
“Just get more education” doesn’t work when student debt ($1.7 trillion total according to Federal Reserve data) creates another financial trap, and research shows 43% of recent college graduates are underemployed in jobs that don’t require their degrees.
“Just work harder” doesn’t work when studies show approximately 8% of people experiencing homelessness have full-time employment.
The math doesn’t work. The system doesn’t work. And current trends suggest it’s getting worse, not better.
See: 🏛️ BLS: Manufacturing employment data, 📊 Pew Research: Gig economy analysis, 🏛️ BLS: Multiple jobholders data, 📊 Economic Policy Institute: Union wage premium, 🏛️ Federal Reserve: Student debt data, 📊 McKinsey: AI impact on employment, 🏛️ USICH: Employed homeless data
The Mobile Home Park Crisis: The Last Refuge Under Siege
For many Americans priced out of traditional housing, mobile home parks represented a final bastion of affordable homeownership. Own your home, rent the land beneath it. A compromise that at least offered equity and stability.
Corporate investors discovered this vulnerability and exploited it ruthlessly.
The Perfect Trap
Mobile home residents face a unique and devastating form of exploitation. They own their homes but not the land, making them extraordinarily vulnerable:
- Moving costs $5,000-$10,000—often more than the home’s remaining value
- Many parks ban “used” homes over 5 years old, eliminating moving as an option
- Property owners control the only practical market for selling the home
Corporate buyers have systematically targeted mobile home parks specifically because residents are trapped. NPR reporting based on Census data shows median lot rents have jumped approximately 45% over the past decade nationally. In some communities, particularly in high-growth Sun Belt markets, rents have doubled or tripled.
The Extraction Playbook
Companies like Havenpark Communities and others buy parks and immediately implement the standard wealth-extraction strategy:
- Rent increases of $50-$100 or more per month annually
- Unbundled fees: Trash, water, sewer, lawn care now charged separately
- Violation fines: $10 for using a leaf blower, $50 for “clutter,” $25 for late payment
- Deferred maintenance: Roads, drainage systems, common areas deteriorate
- Aggressive evictions: NPR reporting shows higher eviction rates in corporate-owned parks compared to family-owned operations
In Central Florida, Click Orlando investigated cases where lot rents tripled – from $245 to $725 monthly in Tradewinds Mobile Home Park in Cocoa. At The Colony mobile home park in Merritt Island, resident Heather Powers saw her lot rent increase three times in less than a year, reaching $855 monthly.
In Forks, Washington, the Washington Post documented Virginia Rubio’s experience watching her lot rent jump from $350 to $1,000 monthly. She receives $860 in Social Security. The math is simple and devastating.
Where Reform Fails
Several states have attempted to regulate mobile home park rent increases. The results are instructive:
- New York implemented a rent cap as part of its 2019 rent stabilization law. Corporate owners now raise rents by the maximum allowable amount every single year.
- Delaware succeeded in passing resident protections in 2024
- Iowa, Colorado, and Montana failed to pass similar protections despite resident advocacy
- Michigan’s laws haven’t been updated since 1987, leaving residents with effectively no recourse
The pattern is clear: corporate lobbying frequently overwhelms attempts at regulation. Even when regulations pass, they’re often implemented at the maximum allowable increase rather than providing meaningful relief.
See: 📊 PBS NewsHour: Corporate mobile home park takeover, 📊 NPR: 45% rent increases, eviction rates, 📊 Bridge Michigan: Michigan mobile home parks, 📊 Click Orlando: Florida lot rent surge, 📊 Washington Post: Mobile home rent increases, 📊 Governing: State reform efforts, 📊 Planetizen: Mobile home housing crisis
The Final Stage: Criminalization
When people can no longer afford housing after being priced out of apartments, unable to buy homes, evicted from mobile home parks they end up in vehicles. And increasingly, that too is being criminalized.
Living in Vehicles: The New American Reality
Federal data from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness documents a 213% increase in municipal ordinances restricting vehicle dwelling between 2006 and 2019. Today, 50% of 187 cities surveyed have laws prohibiting people from living in cars, vans, or RVs.
In Los Angeles, approximately 10,000 people live in vehicles according to NPR reporting from the city’s homeless count. King County, Washington (Seattle area), documented 3,372 people living in cars, vans, or RVs in its point-in-time count according to Slate analysis. Transfers Magazine research from UCLA shows vehicular homelessness grew 17% nationally between 2019 and 2022.
The Criminalization Cycle
Cities aren’t helping these residents find housing. They’re ticketing and towing them into complete destitution.
CalMatters investigation revealed San Jose towed 64 vehicles in the first quarter of 2025 under new enforcement. San Francisco implemented 2-hour parking limits citywide specifically to target vehicle dwellers. NBC San Diego documented the cycle: ticket, fine, failure to pay, tow, impound fees, vehicle lost. Now completely homeless with no shelter at all.
UCLA’s Transfers Magazine analysis identifies this as “planning against” vehicular homelessness rather than planning for solutions. Cities spend hundreds of thousands on enforcement while providing zero transitional housing options.
The perverse logic: ticket people who can’t afford rent until they lose their last shelter, then arrest them for sleeping on the street.
See: 🏛️ USICH: 213% increase in anti-vehicle laws, 📊 NPR: LA vehicle homelessness, 📊 Slate: King County vehicle residents, 📊 Transfers Magazine UCLA: 17% growth analysis, 📊 CalMatters: California enforcement, 📊 NBC San Diego: Ban enforcement settlement
The Pattern: Wealth Flows Upward
Connect the dots and a clear pattern emerges:
- Corporate investors buy properties with cash, outbidding families
- Rents increase dramatically, extracting maximum wealth from tenants
- Property values rise, increasing property taxes and displacing longtime homeowners
- Middle-class families are forced to move to less expensive areas
- The displaced end up in mobile home parks, where corporate owners raise lot rents aggressively
- The most vulnerable end up in vehicles
- Cities criminalize vehicle dwelling, pushing people into complete destitution
At every stage, the pattern is the same: wealth extraction flowing upward to corporate owners and the ultra-wealthy.
The Numbers Tell the Story
- Blackstone has over $1 trillion in assets under management across all asset classes as of Q2 2025
- UnitedHealth Group’s annual profits rose from $5.6 billion in 2014 to $25.7 billion in 2024. A 359% increase
- The top 5 health insurers have generated $371 billion in profits since the Affordable Care Act passed
- Three companies control over 80% of the health insurance market in many state markets according to American Medical Association analysis
This isn’t a free market. It’s corporate feudalism masquerading as capitalism.
See: 📊 Blackstone: Q2 2025 AUM, 🔵 Jacobin: Health insurance profits, 🏛️ AMA: Market concentration study
Where the Money Goes: The Billionaire Class
The housing crisis isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader pattern of wealth consolidation that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
The wealthiest Americans and largest corporations spend billions annually on lobbying to maintain their market dominance. Research from Princeton University shows they’ve effectively captured both political parties, ensuring that “reform” efforts rarely threaten their core profit centers.
The Oligarchy
America’s economy is dominated by a handful of billionaires and massive corporations that have eliminated true competition through:
- Market concentration: Just three companies control the majority of health insurance in most state markets; similar concentration exists in housing development, food processing, telecommunications, and finance
- Regulatory capture: Executives rotate between government positions and the industries they’re supposed to regulate
- Political control: Lobbying spending and campaign contributions ensure favorable legislation
- Monopolistic practices: Federal Trade Commission cases document price-fixing, vertical integration, and predatory acquisitions that eliminate competition
What Americans experience isn’t capitalism or free markets. It’s a controlled economy where a small group of billionaires has consolidated control over essential services including housing and systematically eliminated competition.
See: 🏛️ Princeton: Gilens & Page study on policy outcomes, 📊 OpenSecrets: Federal lobbying by industry, 📊 OpenSecrets: Revolving door database, 🏛️ FTC: Antitrust enforcement actions
The Human Cost
Behind every statistic is a human story:
- The teacher sleeping in her car in the school parking lot
- The veteran living in an RV, ticketed nightly by police
- The elderly woman who paid off her mortgage but can’t afford property taxes
- The family of four moving to a rural area with limited job prospects because they can’t afford city rents
- The mobile home owner who invested life savings into a home they must now abandon
This isn’t just an economic crisis. It’s a moral catastrophe.
The Bottom Line
America’s housing crisis is not an accident of market forces. It’s the predictable result of allowing essential human needs – shelter, healthcare, education – to be treated as profit-maximization vehicles for the ultra-wealthy.
The pattern is clear:
- Deregulation allows corporate consolidation
- Consolidation eliminates competition
- Monopoly power enables price gouging
- Lobbying prevents meaningful reform
- Criminalization punishes the victims
Young people can’t afford to buy homes. Seniors are being forced out after a lifetime of payments. The middle class is being systematically displaced. Mobile home residents are trapped and exploited. People living in vehicles are being criminalized for their poverty.
At every stage, wealth flows upward to a small group of billionaires and corporations while ordinary Americans are squeezed harder each year.
The question isn’t whether this system is sustainable. It clearly isn’t. The question is how much more wealth extraction Americans will tolerate before demanding fundamental change.
Methodology: A Collaborative Investigation
This article represents a collaborative research effort between human insight and AI analysis, demonstrating what’s possible when investigative journalism combines domain expertise with computational research capabilities.
Human Contributions (Primary Investigator)
Pattern Recognition & Framing:
- Identified the cascade connection: legislative failures → income bracket migration → homelessness growth
- Recognized that housing crisis intersects with employment restructuring, mobile home exploitation, and criminalization
- Framed the investigation around wealth extraction patterns rather than isolated housing market dynamics
- Insisted on rigorous sourcing standards and evidence-based claims throughout
Editorial Direction:
- Demanded geographic and temporal specificity (e.g., “Connecticut homelessness up 18%” rather than vague generalizations)
- Required qualifiers for projections and forecasts to maintain credibility
- Identified need for international comparison to prove solutions exist
- Pushed for “bad laws that need repeal” angle alongside failed reform attempts
Quality Control:
- Systematically verified all numeric claims against primary sources
- Corrected broken links and replaced with authoritative alternatives
- Ensured claims were properly hedged when data was uncertain
- Maintained narrative coherence across complex, interconnected topics
AI Contributions (Research & Analysis)
Data Compilation:
- Searched and retrieved data from HUD, Pew Research, OpenSecrets, state legislative databases, BLS, and dozens of other authoritative sources
- Cross-referenced homelessness data (1990: 229K → 2024: 771K) with legislative timelines
- Compiled state-by-state legislative attempt data (200+ bills, ~15% passage rate)
- Aggregated international housing affordability comparisons (Vienna 25% vs US 45% of income)
Synthesis & Visualization:
- Connected disparate data points into cohesive narrative (middle class shrinkage, wage stagnation, homelessness growth, lobbying spending)
- Created two interactive dashboards with 14 total data visualizations
- Developed Protection Strength Scale (0-10) for state housing reform assessment
- Built timeline showing correlation between failed legislation and accelerating homelessness
Source Management:
- Organized 100+ sources by political leaning and institutional type
- Created comprehensive citation system linking every major claim to verifiable sources
- Maintained source legend (🏛️ government, 📊 nonpartisan, 🔵 center-left, 🔴 center-right)
- Ensured all links were functional and led to authoritative sources
Collaborative Process
This investigation followed an iterative methodology:
- Human insight identified the core question: Why do housing reforms consistently fail despite growing crisis?
- AI conducted comprehensive research: Legislative histories, lobbying data, homelessness statistics, international comparisons
- Human refined the analysis: Demanded specificity, corrected errors, identified gaps
- AI synthesized findings: Connected patterns across employment, housing, and policy domains
- Human quality-controlled: Verified claims, corrected methodology, ensured narrative strength
This approach demonstrates the value of human-AI collaboration in investigative journalism: human pattern recognition and editorial judgment combined with computational research capacity and data synthesis.
Transparency Note
All claims in this article are sourced from publicly available data from government agencies, academic institutions, nonpartisan research organizations, and journalistic investigations. Where data is uncertain or projections are involved, we have explicitly noted this (e.g., “according to MetLife projections,” “studies suggest,” “approximately”).
The legislative failures documented are matters of public record traceable through Congress.gov, state legislative databases, and news coverage. Lobbying amounts come from mandatory federal disclosures via OpenSecrets.org. Homelessness data comes from HUD’s annual Point-in-Time counts.
We believe transparency about methodology—including the collaborative human-AI process—strengthens rather than undermines credibility. The analysis stands on the data, not on who compiled it.
Sources & Citations
Housing Market Data & Research
🏛️ Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies – “America’s Rental Housing 2024” report showing 50% of renters cost-burdened. Press Release | Analysis
📊 MetLife Investment Management – 2022 forecast on institutional investor control. CNBC Coverage
📊 ResiClub Analytics – Blackstone portfolio data. Analysis
📊 Norada Real Estate – Blackstone housing empire analysis. Report
📊 NPR Planet Money – Private equity impact on neighborhoods. Article
📊 MoneyWise – Largest landlord analysis. Article
Senior Property Tax Crisis
🏛️ NIH/PMC – Property taxes and elderly mobility study. Study
📊 Central Illinois Proud – Seniors forced out by taxes. Article
📊 Newsweek – State exemption analysis. Map
📊 SmartAsset – Senior property tax guide. Guide
🏛️ NY State Taxation – Senior exemption programs. Official Info
Employment & Labor Data
🏛️ Bureau of Labor Statistics – Manufacturing employment, multiple jobholders, union data. CES Data | CPS Tables
🏛️ BLS – Metropolitan area employment statistics. OEWS Data
🏛️ USDA Economic Research Service – Rural housing and employment data. Data
📊 Pew Research Center – Gig economy participation studies. Research
📊 Economic Policy Institute – Union wage premium analysis. Research
🏛️ Federal Reserve – Student debt data ($1.7 trillion total). Data
📊 McKinsey & Company – AI and automation employment impact. Research
Mobile Home Park Crisis
📊 PBS NewsHour – Corporate takeover of mobile home parks. Article
📊 NPR – 45% lot rent increases, eviction data. Article
📊 Bridge Michigan – Michigan mobile home parks. Article
📊 Click Orlando – Florida lot rent surge investigation. Investigation
📊 Washington Post – Mobile home rent case studies. Article
📊 Governing – State reform efforts. Article
📊 Planetizen – Mobile home housing crisis overview. Article
Vehicular Homelessness & Criminalization
🏛️ U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness – 213% increase in anti-vehicle laws. Report
📊 NPR – Los Angeles vehicle homelessness. Article
📊 Slate – King County vehicle residents data. Article
📊 Transfers Magazine (UCLA) – 17% growth analysis. Article
📊 CalMatters – California enforcement targeting. Article
📊 NBC San Diego – Ban enforcement settlement. Article
📊 Invisible People – Legal landscape overview. Article
🏛️ Journal of American Planning Association – Academic study of municipal regulations. Study
Corporate Power & Political Capture
📊 OpenSecrets – Federal lobbying disclosure ($4.2B annual, industry breakdowns). Data
📊 OpenSecrets – Revolving door tracking. Database
🏛️ Princeton University – Gilens & Page 2014 study on policy outcomes. Study
🏛️ Federal Trade Commission – Antitrust enforcement actions. FTC Site
📊 Blackstone – Official corporate data, Q2 2025 AUM. Website
🔵 Jacobin – Health insurance profit analysis. Article
🏛️ American Medical Association – Market concentration study. Study
Homelessness Data
🏛️ HUD – Point-in-Time Count 2024 showing 771,400 individuals. Report
📊 National Alliance to End Homelessness – State of Homelessness 2025 Edition. Report
📊 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis – Who is homeless in US 2025 update. Analysis
📊 Visual Capitalist – State-by-state homelessness mapping. Map
🏛️ USAFacts – State homelessness rates. Data
🏛️ USICH – Homelessness data and trends. Data
Middle Class & Income Data
📊 Pew Research Center – Middle class shrinkage analysis (61% to 50%). Analysis
📊 Pew Research Center – State of American middle class 2024. Report
🏛️ USAFacts – Wealth distribution changes 1990-2022. Analysis
📊 Economic Policy Institute – Wage stagnation analysis. Charts
📊 GovFacts – Shrinking middle class government data analysis. Analysis
International Comparisons
🏛️ OECD – Housing affordability data. Data
📊 City of Vienna – Social housing data (gemeindebau). Official Data
📊 Y-Foundation – Finland Housing First model results. Research
📊 Urban Institute – International housing policy comparisons. Research
📊 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy – Comparative housing policy research. Research
Interactive Dashboards:
- Housing Crisis Economic Data Dashboard (income cascade, wage vs. cost squeeze, legislative failures)
- Housing Policy & Legislative Failures Dashboard (timeline, state-by-state, international comparison, lobbying)
This investigation was conducted October 2025. All data and sources were verified as accurate at time of publication.
About The Open Record The Open Record is dedicated to data-driven investigative journalism that connects patterns across policy, economics, and social outcomes. We believe in radical transparency about our methodology and collaborative processes.
For questions about this investigation or to suggest additional research directions, contact: theopenrecord.org
This is part of an ongoing series examining how hidden costs and wealth extraction are reshaping the American economy. See our previous analysis: “How Trade Wars and Policy Failures: America’s Assault on Its Own Food Security“
