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Yeah, as an elder millennial, I’ve never been able to afford to live alone. This is by no means a new problem, but it’s definitely getting worse.
Just got engaged to my long term partner. We live with 2 other people and, with the way things are going, we will be married and still sharing accommodation because 2 full time jobs aren’t enough to cover rent AND food.
My bootstraps can’t be pulled any higher. I work 6 days a week and spend my Sunday working on my web design business to try make ends meet. Thank god I’m paying my landlords mortgage. I can’t imagine how they’re coping at the moment…
Its a clown world.
Depending on what your full time jobs are, have you looked at smaller cities? Sometimes housing is so much cheaper that it’s worth it even if your salary is lower…
Moving from the city I was in to where I’m at now I’ve lost nothing as far as services are concerned and the same house sells for half the price and has a bigger lot…
I worked with a old woman in her 60s with a roommate in 2015. Her salary doesn’t provide for her living alone.
For me, my rent doubled. So Im betting she’s now with 1-3 more roommates since then.
Moving out of home when mum dies, because that inheretance is probably the only way I’ll ever buy a house
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Are we pretending that millennials are affording apartments alone? Cause I know very few doing that. Moving back in with your parents, though, that shit’s common.
I was gonna say, most of Gen X has had roommates since we graduated college.
The headlines just keep repeating. Insert newest generation and print
It’s getting measurably worse at a fairly predictable clip - boomers had it easy, x/y less so, it’s dark for milennials, and impossible for zoomers/alpha.
The guardrails were removed and wheels set in motion by the boomers so they could more effectively ransack the economy - everything since then has been a consolidation of wealth and power at the direct expense of workers.
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It is actually worse each time, though. In previous times, it was “oh lordy, prices are going up, shucky darn, guess I will only have 2 pieces of avocado toast each day from now on”. Now people just can’t even get by.
I’m in the Midwest. Most millennials I know are living on their own or with their partner. However, the younger millennials and gen Z I know? Very few I know aren’t living with parents.
I’m in Seattle, most of my friends have roommates or moved back in with their parents (which I did in 2020 when I lost my last job). I am making slightly more than my last job now with a second degree but after inflation I’m making quite a bit less and rent has gone up significantly since then. So I still can’t afford my own place.
I’m an older millennial and my brother is younger. Our parents are old enough we each have a parent living with us.
Older Millenials are more like younger Gen X, while younger Millenials are more like older Gen Z.
Landlords dream of a future where they can charge so much for rent that you need 3 generations of people crammed into a tiny apartment to make payments.
This feels like a rerun
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Time polish up that guillotine.
Black Rock l, vanguard and others are turning the American Dream into a subscription model
Isn’t that called a slum lord?
Used to be. It’s moving towards just being a landlord though.
It’s called one of the sexiest human beings alive and they would have most people you or I would be interested in at their beck and call.
We breed for greed.
Just a reminder.
In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average home was $11,000.
So, national minimum wage is $7 something, so homes should be about $77k, right?
Quick history of inflation in America. President Eisenhower started the US/Vietnam War, and JFK kept it going. Ike and Kennedy both wanted to keep it small, but LBJ made a major commitment of troops and air power to deliver a knockout punch. That turned into a quagmire where the US couldn’t pull out without looking like losers. President Johnson [LBJ] started printing money to pay for the War, rather than raise taxes. Nixon was elected as a peace candidate. Nixon’s Vietnam policy alone is worth several books, but we’ll just talk about the US dollar.
Nixon doubled down on Johnson’s bombing policy; the US factories were working 24/7 to make more weapons. Great, except the money was all paper. When the Arab Oil boycott hit the price of everything went through the roof. Suddenly stay at home moms were forced to get jobs to keep the family fed. In 1968 ‘middle class’ was one job to support a family, by 1980, two income families were becoming the norm.
Then came Reagan. Big tax cuts for the rich were supposed to make everything golden again. In 1980, $1 million was considered a vast fortune; by 1992 it was what a really rich guy paid for a party.
Dang.
The working class has been selling itself out ever since the end of world war 2.
Que the Iraq war part deux. Immediately followed by the Afghan invasion.
Paid for on credit card. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Don’t forget the giant expansion of the government under Bush² either, the TSA, DHS, Medicare expansion
The aughties fucked over the entire upcoming century. Obama swaging the wall street plutocrats after 2008 with, not just the bail outs, but with relaxing corporate control of rental property is looking really, REALLY short sighted about now
Trump repealing Obama’s DoddFrankLite is gonna come back and haunt us too, when wall street implodes in the inevitable 2008 repeat, because if you can trust a banker to do anything, it’s to suck as much blood out as possible and let the public pay for life support. It’s gonna happen again. Guaranteed.
Suddenly stay at home moms were forced to get jobs to keep the family fed. In 1968 ‘middle class’ was one job to support a family, by 1980, two income families were becoming the norm.
This was not because of inflation, but because women were beginning to be seen as fully human
Frankly between this and “but the money was paper” just makes you sound like some kind of neotraditionalist goldbug.
‘Were forced to work’
VS
‘Were permitted to work’
I’m not sure what went wrong with your brain to not be able to distinguish between these two. You’re responding to someone who said the first version. You clapped back with serious attitude about the second version.
They’re not the same though.
SCB is just a contrarian, block them and move on they aren’t worth your time.
Yes I am aware that this person used slanted and incorrect language. That’s sort of my entire point.
You’ll forgive me for not taking someone, who wants the gold standard and traditionalist housewives back, very seriously.
You funny. I never mentioned the gold standard or ‘traditional’ roles. If you’re going to put words in my mouth, I’d like them with an order of nachos and a fruit punch.
I came in to say something similar. Don’t focus on the price of the rent. The problem is the salary. Rent to salary has been going up and someone is pocketing the difference.
The problem is both.
Edit:
Of course this isn’t universally applicable, but in my city there’s basically six large landlords that own and manage the types of large, multi-family apartment buildings where the majority of people live.
There’s no competition in housing and it shows in the pricing, which has been skyrocketing not coincidentally as the firms consolidate and then all “somehow” price align using the same software market rates.
That’s not how an inflationary economy works. Rent will always go up in yesterday’s money.
If the market was doing its job, salaries wouldn’t be much behind. So the ratio of rent:salary would be relatively stable.
So you’re saying solely blame employers for consistent rent increases that top 10% year over year in some markets?
Employers aren’t going to keep raising everyone’s salary 10% every year to compete with the amount of greed in housing markets. Small ones can’t afford to, and large ones will be punished brutally by their investors for doing so.
Two things can be true: salaries can have stagnated, and rents / housing prices can have skyrocketed as well.
That’s $10.39/hr adjusted for inflation.
'Adjusted for inflation ’ is kind of a joke. If inflation worked the way the adjustments would have you believe, the average home of today would be $120,000 apx. It’s about three times that.
Adjusted for inflation works to show people how much less they’re paying us every year.
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‘Abysmal?’ Because they didn’t have computers and air conditioning? Are you saying that improvements in technology are dependent on inflation?
If you think that they were terrible because they were smaller than the average house today, I suggest you look at the tiny houses and multiple room mate situations people are looking at today. In 1960, If you had three house mates you were probably in prison.
That’s the point.
Expect things to continue to get worse as long as most people believe the disparity in wealth should continue to grow.
We need a new deal, I mean a new new deal. Because this is getting ridiculous, I’m lying it was ridiculous 20 years ago, now it is just the reason why dystopian fiction is impossible to write, how can you top real life?
What kills me is when you go into the realestate subs and they talk about how they have to constantly increase every year because the cost of everything is going up.
Nah bruh, I’ve had my house for 4 years and nothing has increased at any noticeable level.
Yeah boy am I glad I pulled the trigger on a real estate purchase when I did. My costs (mainly HOA, and to a lesser extent taxes) have gone up very slightly in the last few years, but nowhere near the 30-40% increases I used to get smacked with renting over the same timeframe.
It’s like 1.5-2x as expensive as it was to rent in this (already expensive) area 3 years ago.
I’m determined to never rent again. Landlords are unbelievably greedy.
My father is in real estate and recently had a “talk” with me about how putting 15% into retirement won’t help me and that the only way to secure my future is through real estate. I didn’t have the reverse “talk” with him where I would have pointed out how he’s completely underestimating how much money it’s going to cost to change his diapers in a couple years and how that house will only offset the costs rather than repair them.
Square Deal (1908)
New Deal (1933)
I Have Altered The Deal (2024)
This isn’t new. I’m 43 so call me whatever you want, Gen X, Millenial, somewhere in between. I didn’t live on my own (meaning without roommates) until about 10 years ago. And even then, I bought a house with my wife. so still kinda roommates.
didn’t this happen a long time ago to an earlier generation
We need a new new deal
Neither can Gen-X.
Completely off topic, but in the article they say some apartment complexes are offering “private liquor lockups.” Wtf?
Anecdotal, but when I was looking for my first apartment about ten years ago I toured a building that didn’t allow residents to keep alcohol. Unsure if it’s even legal (or enforced), but the landlord and property manager were a local pastor and his wife.
Yes, that’s illegal. I would have been kegging in everyday the first week of my residency just to fuck with them.
No one bats an eye at this but if it was a Muslim family who prevented people from having pork in their homes people would be losing their minds
I could possibly see it being a legal grey area in a dry county, but that’s just bonkers to me.
Dry countries are a weird concept to me already
Edit: I meant counties, but I’ll leave it.
I got evicted this year so I feel it
Meanwhile, in Canada, rent prices are so high that basically nobody lives alone anymore.
They just changed the generation in the headline. This has been the case in the US for awhile.
Jimmy McMillan 2024
“anymore” implies that until recently that wasn’t the case
Yes, the rent is too damn high, but living in an apartment alone has been a luxury for young people as long as I can remember. I sure as hell couldn’t afford it when I was in my twenties. I lived in a pantry for a couple years and didn’t complain. This is a weird measuring stick.
No one is saying that people haven’t historically had roommates to save money.
What you are failing to recognize is that someone working the same job back then and now are living very different realities.
The average home used to cost two times the average salary. Now it is 8 times the average salary.
In 2023 your money is getting you less, completely adjusted for inflation. A waitress today is far worse off than a waitress in the 70s.
Imagine a waitress telling you they are paying their way through college with their tips. That used to be a possibility, in 2023 you would just assume they meant tips from selling their body.
Yeah I know all of these things. I’m also a person who exists in this economy. I’m just saying that not being able to afford living alone is a bad choice of things to highlight.
I don’t assume women are prostitutes though. That’s just fucked up.
shut up you know exactly what I meant. nice try at being a white knight though
The only people I knew in college that were able to pay for it while going to school were strippers, one was a man. Some were open about being prostitutes on the side. You think a fucking waiter could pay their way through college?
You either sell sex, your organs, or your future. pick one
I actually genuinely don’t know what you meant. I said something and it seemed like you just said a bunch of other things that were kinda related but also not. It’s not “White Knighting” when someone tells you that something you said is fucked up. It’s just someones telling you you’re saying fucked up things.
