News release: “The nation is in the throes of a housing downturn that is shaping up to be the worst in a generation, finds The State of the Nation’s Housing 2008 Report issued today by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. While the falloff in housing starts, new home sales, and existing home sales already rivals the worst downturns in the post World War II era, home price declines and mortgage defaults are the worst on records that date back to the 1960s and 1970s.”