Although most clients of financial advisors may not be scrimping on food or health, they are sacrificing savings and retirement funds to buy a home for themselves or their adult children.
“Trying to buy a house for many blows up the retirement savings,” says Mark Kemp, founder of Kemp Harvest Financial Group in Harleysville, Pa. “Other clients of ours are trying to figure out how they are going to pull off their own retirement, and then they want to give money to the kids to buy a house. They doom themselves to failure.”
Governments have made some efforts to help in the housing crisis, but the lack of a strong federal response has left state and local governments struggling to expand rental assistance and promote construction of affordable housing in areas with access to better educational and employment opportunities through inclusionary zoning and other local resources, the report says.
But Herbert from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies adds, “These efforts are falling far short of need. Policymakers at all levels of government need to take stock of what can and should be done to expand access to good-quality, affordable housing, which is so central to the current well-being and potential contribution of each and every individual.”