(RECAP: A well loved narrative of the U.S. housing market has been that huge city prices are locking out young buyers, feeding a cycle in which a growing number of people are forced to rent at ever higher rates as demand overwhelms supply. Throw in the fact that wages haven’t kept pace, and you have a wide swath of Americans who can’t save enough to ever buy that first home. The reality may be a bit more complicated. t’s right that, when combined with a lack of government support for affordable housing, this situation has pushed the number of cash-poor renters to a new high. On the other hand, the number of homeowners severely cost-burdened or moderately cost-burdened really fell from 2013 to 2014. And while the poorest renters are more likely to find themselves in dire straits, data suggests market-rate renters are keeping up with rising rents, and are thus able to place some money away for that eventual first buy.)

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(RECAP: A major redevelopment project in Richmond’s East End will receive a $2.5 million grant from the state, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Wednesday. At an event on the lawn of the ancient Armstrong High School building, McAuliffe said the Richmond project will be one of the first beneficiaries of a new funding program to support affordable and mixed-income housing. The mixed-income development plotted for the Armstrong site, part of a larger effort to break up poverty in the East End, will include 40 townhouses for sale and 240 rental units for seniors and families. Some rental units will serve as replacement housing for residents of the Creighton Court public housing site. McAuliffe announced that another $2.5 million grant will go to a similar mixed-income housing project in Montgomery County at the site of a former elementary school.)

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(RECAP: Americans still want to own homes — if they can afford to. That’s the finding of a report being released Wednesday by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. The pressures of student debt, rising rents and the leftover wreckage from the nearly decade-ancient housing bust have restrained people’s ability to buy, even though the dream remains alive. The report sees reasons for both optimism (more millennials are poised to leave the nest) and concern (rising numbers of renters face extreme costs).Those factors could determine whether the share of Americans who are renting keeps rising or whether the nation’s home ownership rate can rebound from a near 48-year low of 63.5 percent.)

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