The United States’ residential sector is chronically underserved; since 2017, the nation has been experiencing a large and growing shortage of housing. In 2017, this shortage was an estimated 731,000 housing units, but as of 2020 has now grown to between 3.8 – 6.8 million units, according to Kingbird Analysis of Federal Reserve Board of St. Louis, US Census Bureau, ACS IPUMS, and CoStar Data, along with Freddie Mac Housing Supply: A Growing Deficit May 2021 and National Association of Realtors Housing is Critical Infrastructure: Social and Economic Benefits of Building More Housing June 2021. The lack of supply relative to demand in the US residential sector, specifically within the workforce housing segment, has created an ideal, fundamentals driven environment for investing in workforce housing.

Among the groups most negatively affected by the housing gap is workforce households, those earning between $45,000 and $75,000 per year in household income. These households make up the largest group of renters, at 9.7 million, or 23.6% of total renter households, according to Kingbird Analysis of 2021 1-Year ACS PUMS Data. Despite this, the supply of housing affordable to this cohort is inadequate to their growing need.

Residential construction employment has yet to recover from the Global Financial Crisis. Employment in the sector peaked at 1 million workers in 2006, then troughed at 528,000 in 2011. Only 921,700 were employed in the industry as of August 2022 – a similar employment level to July 2004, according to Kingbird Analysis of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Data. As a result, an estimated 70% of construction firms have difficulty finding qualified employees, per Exhibit 11.

Increasingly stringent local zoning, land use, and environmental laws and regulations are arguably the most significant headwinds adversely impacting housing production. State and local regulations impose significant risk elements and unproductive costs and serve to limit not only where new housing can be developed, but also constrain the asset class, product type, density, material, and style of new developments.

New housing supply (i.e., net housing deliveries) is the completion of new housing units, less demolished and newly uninhabitable units. A housing unit is any form of housing accommodation, such as an apartment, townhome, single-family home, condominium, or mobile home. Housing supply has two sources: 1) private construction, or non-governmental enterprises, which makes up 98.5% of new construction spending; and 2) public construction, or government funded construction, which is just 1.5% of construction spending. This White Paper will focus on private construction due to its prevalence as the primary source of new supply.