alt Hacker NewsAnd yet the homeownership rate in 1950 was 53% (an all-time high up to that point) compared to 65% today: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Housi... Only 80% of units had private indoor toilets or showers.
It is notable that the median monthly rent was $35/month on a median income of $3000, so ~15% of income spent on rental housing. But it's interesting reading that report because a significant focus was on the overcrowding "problem". Housing was categorized by number of rooms, not number of bedrooms. The median number of rooms was 4, and the median number of occupants >4 per unit (or more than 1 person per room). I don't think it's a stretch to say that the amount of space and facilities you get for your money today is roughly equivalent. Yes, greater percentage of your income goes to housing, and yet we have far more creature comforts today then back in 1950--multiple TVs, cellphones, appliances, and endless amounts of other junk. We can buy many more goods (durable and non-durable) for a much lower percentage of our income.
There's no simple story here.
What an interesting paper you found! Home ownership stats in contemporary times are quite misleading because of debt. Most home owners now are still paying rent in the form of a mortgage to a bank. In the 50s most home owners genuinely owned their homes 'free and clear'. The exact rate was 56% in the 1951 per your paper (which was a local low), and now it's at 40% which is a local high. And the contemporary demographics are all messed up - it's largely driven by older to elderly individuals in non-urban low-income states.
As for number of occupants, the 50s had a sustainable fertility rate. That means, on average, every woman was having at least 2 kiddos. So a median 4 occupant house would be husband, wife, and 2 children living in a place with a master bedroom, kids room, a combined kitchen/dining room, and a living room. Bathrooms, oddly enough, did not count as rooms. So in modern parlance it'd mostly be a 2/2 for up to 14% of one person's median income, and 0% in most cases as most people 'really' owned their homes.
We definitely have lots more gizmos, but I feel like that's an exchange that relatively few people would make in hindsight.