Younger generation packs together with roommates because housing so expensive

Due to the shortages of lower priced housing options and high rent prices, the younger generation is increasingly having to pack together with roommates to be able to afford rent, if they are to move out of their parents home.

It's not surprising. Due to a shortage of lower priced housing options, young adults are having to cram together into housing situations. This of course can create all sorts of additional stresses.

While it's true that having roommates has always been popular among the younger adult population, the situation has changed and become more dire now. Many who do not want to live with roommates are finding themselves forced to do so.

Renting alone is too expensive for Gen Z

The article shows a map, "Share of renters who live alone by metro area, 2022"

The average age of someone living alone now is 50 years old, and it used to be 25 years old.
Generation Z is being squeezed out, and most have roommates and friends, spouses, even parents.
The typical homebuyer now is 50 years old.
87% of Gen Z lives with their parents because it's unaffordable to rent or buy right now.

Many young Americans are splitting steep rents that eat into their income. Meanwhile, more baby boomers have ditched homeownership for low-maintenance apartments.

The big picture: Squeezed Gen Z-ers are moving in together or leaving big cities.

Some are getting creative: Manhattan transplant Piper Phillips shared a one-bedroom apartment with her boyfriend and a friend.

More are returning to their childhood bedrooms: The number of Americans aged 25–34 living at home has jumped over 87% in the past two decades, per census data.

It's not just the East and West coasts that are out of reach. Solo living is unaffordable in many of the country's bigger cities, including Charlotte, N.C., and Charleston, S.C., according to The Economist's Carrie Bradshaw index.

Nationally, 17.6% of renters lived alone in 2022, census data shows.

The typical repeat homebuyer this year was 58, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors.

Renting alone is too expensive for Gen Z, Sami Sparber, Axios - Economy, updated Nov 21, 2023

related threads:
Younger adult generation shows higher suicide rates amid rising financial pressures (Jul 17, 2023 )
Younger generation moving to rural regions because they cannot afford housing


1 out of 10 young adults now experience homelessness each year in the U.S.

Gen Z has experienced exceptionally high poverty rates -- greater than those of millennials, Gen Xers and baby boomers during 2010 to 2021 (the years available on the KIDS COUNT Data Center). The share of zoomers living in poverty reached a peak of 23% in 2011 and 2012, then steadily fell to 17% -- about 11.3 million young people -- by 2021.​

What the Statistics Say About Generation Z, updated Nov 1, 2023. Annie. E. Casey Foundation

a thread that contains some discussion (if you read down through the posts) about the difficulties of living with roommates:
it's not just about wages, it's about hours & job security too (posted in Labor & Employment section)

 

Well, what did you expect? Real estate investment is full of greed! I knew that this housing unaffordability was where we were headed all the way back in the late 1980s and early 1990s as I listened to the radio about the trend exploding.

Those living solo in a house in their 50s inherited it from their parents.

Younger generations are out of luck and will never live alone.

There is no for-profit fix to this situation and you don't want to know the alternative.

 

This is what happens when population growth increases too fast, faster than the economy and new housing growth can sustain it. All of that population growth in developed countries is being fueled by foreign immigration.
The young, who have less money, are having to compete for jobs and housing with adult immigrants.

Both of these groups do not have enough money to create new demand for housing. Building new homes costs money.
What typically happens is, over time, some wealthier middle class families build or buy new houses, and then some of the older homes left behind become available for lower income groups.

That, in my opinion, is the biggest factor for what is going on. Although there are some other factors. One of these is sprawling gentrification in many desirable bigger city areas, which has to do with population growth and how that affects the geometries of cities. Before, there were not enough wealthier people in any city to be able to price out the lower income group from being able to live nearby.
Another factor, maybe more familiar to many, is entry level wages not keeping pace with inflation over the years.

 

Reminds me of my college days. Back in the seventies it was nothing for groups of people to share housing - and then there was the inevitable Kiwi tourist in a sleeping bag on the floor

 

Yes, back then it was common for young people to share housing. But they did it to reduce expenses, even though they could have probably afforded renting an apartment on their own if they had really wanted to or needed to. And because it was fun. Young people often preferred to live with others, usually friends they knew.
But it's becoming less of a choice now, and less about trying to save money and more about "I don't have enough money to pay rent by myself."

(The only where place it was considered "the norm" to have roommates was New York City, but that was kind of an exception, since everyone knew rents were really high there, and NYC was seen as "living the dream" for many young people)

Things have changed and it is harder for young people to afford housing than it used to be. Despite many in the older generation being rather apathetic and wanting to minimize it and say "There were always challenges."

Yes, I concede it's totally true, back in the 70s a lot of young people lived in very cheap circumstances. But it's also because they barely worked and did not want to pay much of their small incomes towards rent. So a lot of the young people who would have slept in a sleeping bag in a friend's home in the 70s have now been forced to get a nearly full time job. Either that or they couldn't move out of their parent's house, or became homeless.

 

Sure there is: remove the profit from idle landowning so that those who seek to profit from providing housing can more easily make profits by doing so. That will not be done because justice is not one of the permissible options.

 

As I have explained to you before, there is very little "idle land" in areas with the worst housing shortages and highest prices. (In fact, some would even argue some of these overcrowded areas have the opposite problem, very little remaining open space)

Perhaps you consider one level houses with a decent-sized yard to be "idle land". Or maybe you think properties in big cities should eliminate the scant green space setbacks between the building and the street. Something which is already happening with all new development.
Maybe you dislike public parks and publicly owned open space trails in cities, and want to eliminate those. I don't know.
Can you even give one example of a specific place where you think the presence of "idle land" is contributing to a housing shortage?

I think you're being ridiculous. You should start a separate thread to have a discussion about it, instead of continually bringing it up in other people's threads.

 

Reminds me of the "Carter Years".

 

A sign of how bad the rental market in Toronto has become. (Toronto is the biggest city in Canada)

A resident in Toronto posted a listing looking for a fellow female tenant who is willing to share her queen sized bed for $900.

"Not even a king [size bed] where you can comfortably place a pillow barrier. How does that work? You just say goodnight roomie and then you roll over?," Anya Ettinger said.

Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated situation. According to Rentals.ca, roommate rental listings have surged in the last few months across Canada since renters are constantly looking for ways to save on housing costs.
Toronto even took the third spot for having the most expensive rent nationally, just behind Victoria and Burnaby, B.C, with an average rent of $2,614 for a one-bedroom unit.

The listing for a "shared bedroom in a lake-facing downtown condo."
"Looking for an easygoing female to share the master bedroom and the one queen-size bed"

A $1,900 deposit is also required to cover first and last month's rent and the cost of fob keys.
Also, required is identification or a Canadian visa or residency proof, along with pay slips and proof of employment and, of course, a background check.

'Toronto is Unhinged': Shared bed is latest questionable rental, Toronto Sun, Denette Wilford, Oct 25, 2023

 

It's a genuine point. In Australia, for example, at any stage there are approximately 1 million vacant houses (and 13 million vacant bedrooms). Our population is 25 million.

 

No, that's just baldly false. Every major city where housing is unaffordable has thousands of vacant residential (or rezonable to residential) lots. In most cases, those lots have been vacant for years. In many cases, they have been vacant for decades. That's in addition to under-used land and vacant buildings, which are typically even more common.

I happen to live in a city world famous for its unaffordable housing. Every major arterial street is lined with dilapidated -- often vacant -- one-and two-story commercial buildings whose owners would love to build high-rise apartment buildings on them, but can't get permission. There are also thousands of residential lots on side streets that have been vacant for years or decades, and even more vacant houses. In fact, vacant houses are so common that the local government has implemented a specific "vacant house tax" to try to get the owners to let someone live in them.

My wife and I do a lot of walking around our neighborhood, and we know very well that many of the million-dollar houses are vacant: there is never anyone outside; the curtains are always drawn; the yard is weedy and unkempt; there is dust all over the car in the carport; junk mail has piled up on the front porch; etc.

That depends on the best use of the location, which is usually indicated by how the neighboring land is being used. If such a property is surrounded by similar properties and someone is living there, it likely is not idle in the relevant sense. But if it is surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings, office buildings, etc., then it certainly counts as idle. Same for ground-level parking lots surrounded by high-rise buildings.

Nonsense. In many cases, large setbacks (often from the side and rear property lines as well as the front) are mandated with little reason, and amount to forcing landowners to waste land.

Parks and public buildings and infrastructure are not relevant to the problem of private landowners being subsidized at public expense to hold desirable locations vacant or underused.

Right. You don't know, and are just makin' $#!+ up again. My issue is specifically with privately owned land whose owners are not using it for anything close to its most appropriate use, and won't let anyone else do so either, because they are content to just idly pocket the subsidy while they wait for its value to increase even more.

Every place where land is mostly privately owned and there is a housing shortage. I have lived in two cities (in two different countries) that were world-famous for unaffordable housing at the time, and in both of them, there was an astonishing amount of vacant and under-used privately owned land. In both, the land tax rate was low -- a fraction of 1% -- and declining.

I am identifying the most relevant facts of economics that others, very much including you, appear to be unaware of.

I will continue to identify the most relevant facts in all the threads I post to.