Lower-income Americans are especially hard-hit by current recession and there has been an “unprecedented” increase in the number of people who are precariously housed. Those are among the grim findings in the 2009 State of the Nation’s Housing report that was released today in Washington DC by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Low Income Housing Coalition and others. Some key observations: “Low income homeowners and renters are hit especially hard in the current climate… in 2007, the year for which the most recent data exists, 51% of low income renters and 43% of low income owners paid more than half their incomes for housing… altogether, 17.9 million households spent more than half of their incomes on housing, a 30% increase that is ‘unprecedented’.” The Wellesley Institute is building on its current and existing housing research and policy work and will release a ‘state of the nation’s housing’ report for Canada this summer.