And this is where things maybe do come back to boomers a little bit. GONZALEZ: So the obvious answer is build more houses, right? But we can't. The problem is, we have more people wanting to live in homes than we have homes. KAUL: The point of all of this is if you just reallocate people from one type of housing to another, you're not solving the problem in the long run. They'd probably just buy a different house. And even if they did choose to sell their homes, they'd still need to find some other place to live. They like their grocery store, their friends. He says baby boomers are healthier than previous generations, so many don't need to move in with their kids or to a nursing home. GONZALEZ: Karan Kaul is a housing supply specialist at the Urban Institute. Baby boomer generation is just not creating the housing shortage. KARAN KAUL: I think it's very, very unfair. So some people are like, sell your homes already. They are choosing to grow old in their homes. They're not moving in with their kids or into a nursing facility or downsizing to a little condo somewhere. And unlike previous generations, baby boomers are not selling their homes as they get older.
Baby boomers have the biggest share of real estate wealth - 44% of it - even though they're just 28% of the adult population. There are 3.8 million fewer homes than we need to meet demand. According to a report last month from Harvard, there's currently less than two months of housing supply in the U.S., which is very, very tight. SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: OK, in a healthy housing market, you'd have about six months of housing supply. A lot of people blame baby boomers, but Sarah Gonzalez with our Planet Money podcast says it's not so simple.
The national housing supply shortage that we're seeing today has actually been decades in the making, and it's probably going to take another decade to fix.
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