For many Americans with lower incomes, owning a home is a sign of having entered a middle-class stability, a study by the MacArthur Foundation says.
Using data from the foundation’s How Housing Matters 2015 report, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies researcher Jennifer Molinsky says that “Affordability challenges that respondents have experienced in their own lives, and see in their communities, contribute to a sense of pessimism about Americans’ chances of social mobility, and a majority still feels that the country is in the midst of the housing crisis that began 8 years ago.”