Renting alone is too expensive for Gen Z
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Just a moment...
https://www.axios.com/local/miami/2023/12/06/renting-alone-expensive-gen-z-priced-out
https://www.axios.com/local/miami/2023/12/06/renting-alone-expensive-gen-z-priced-out
It was too expensive for Gen X too. I think we all started out with room mates.
Yup.
Up to 4 of them at one point.
After a bunch of years of that, my first solo place was a windowless 2 room basement "suite" in an old house behind a gas station.
I rented a 3-bedroom apartment in the early 2010s for $1250 with some friends. I just checked and similar apartments in that neighborhood are $2500-3900 now
I agree that renting alone wasn't an option for our generations but it's become even worse. Pay has not kept up with housing costs at all
[Edit] I just checked and $1250 in 2010 has the same value has $1,775.54 now
Man one my first apartments in 2001 was 360 a month for one bedroom. This was in a small town Texas.
Today same rent is 1300 plus. That fucking nuts and doest jive with inflation.
Yeah exactly. I paid way to much compared to what I made I later moved to a cheaper place. I made 6.76 an hour and had my own place. Today minimum wage is 7.25 and rent is over 1000.
Our country is fucked.
I think they need to have roommates in the bedrooms now. I saw a basement apartment in Englewood, CO for $1650 this week. Garage extra.
Owning a home on a single income is too expensive.
Owning a home is too expensive, period.
Renting a home on a single income is too expensive. <--we are here
Renting a home is too expensive.
How long did we spend outside of those possibilities? 20 years? 30 years? Before WW2 most people didn't own a single family house after WW2 and for about two or three decades white people lived the American dream, and we're back to what's been the norm forever.
Okay, and we should just not dream of big tomorrows? What kind of mindset is this?
We are supposed to dream, discover and build, not grovel, work, and ask for breadcrumbs. We have the resources, this is a hoarding issue.
We also used to have a family structure that would support raising children, and much more free time in a lot of cases.
A single family home for everyone is unsustainable though, going back isn't a bad thing and the family structure you're talking about also existed because people had multiple generations under the same roof.
It can be since people now have the ability to choose to have kids. With pop decline equilibrium might be. Yeah not sure what the interpretation of family structure is but for me I think it is more that grand parents work now. So If I moved back home and had kids today both my grandmother and mother are still working to pay for the home I grew up in so who would help? When I was a child my great grandmother didn't have a job and took care of me. Course my great grandma couldn't read.
If your whole family lived together not everyone would need to work, food expenses would go up, but the mortgage wouldn't.
And it's still unsustainable from a climate change perspective, single family housing means more land use means more people need to drive to work.
I dk you are right mortgage going away Will help but taxes are just half monthly rent and houses need repair. I don't feel the escape. My other side of family also lives in multi gen and with all the kids In college at the same time and covid killing half the working adults in the home my aunt had to take out a loan for emergency house repairs. It's frustrating to watch. Plus my siblings only have rooms because people died.
Well with more remote work, less ppl drive to work so that may help or maybe improve mass transit.
gen x here - I had roommates for 15 years or thereabouts after college, and when I finally made it out on my own it was in really shit apartment after ghetto af apartment.
it's not just a gen z issue
Yeah, as an elder millennial, this is just how it is for all of us, unless you live in the middle of nowhere (but then there's no jobs there).
Is there a generation that could afford to rent by themselves in their early 20s? Maybe a room in a flophouse.
I'm gen x and was able to rent a studio on my own for a few years in my late 20's. Then the recession hit and that lifestyle evaporated. These days I live in a vehicle.
That's us. Hey buddy, I just hope you know that I know what it's like, feel free to pm me if you're feeling angry or sad about anything
I appreciate it but I'm doing ok. Fortunately, I foresaw this outcome and prepared for it instead of being forced.
Nope, just media brainwashing us into being pissed at other generations when it's the ultra rich (that just so happen to own medias) that are the real issue.
Ah well then, thanks for lowering my expectations, I honestly hoped I would be able to get an engineering internship and a home loan within the next ten years of my life but hey I guess sometimes things are meant to go to shit
If you’re in a well-paying STEM career you’ll be able to afford a house eventually, depending on your location.
The greatest generation had some great marketing. About the only thing that was “great” about them, really.
I for one hope gen z is better than previous generations. They got a lot of trouble coming their way.
Well they did win two world wars, which is two more wars than their idiot children, the boomers managed against weaker opposition.
But thats about it for their achievements.
I never felt fighting in a war was inherently honorable of valorous- its not necessarily a thing to be ashamed of, either. that either war broke out was a failure of diplomacy (and of willful desire... lets not forget there were people on both sides- in both wars- spoiling for a fight.)
In any case, they also were responsible for McCarthyism and the Red Scare; the Dixiecrats and opposition to civil liberties... and plenty of other unpleasantness. No. the name is hyperbolic- they weren't some super-human distilled-goodness sort of group. They were just... people. Some were more-bad, and some were more-good. Most had the good and the ugly in equal spades- like every other generation.
I believe the greatest generation is yet to come. Might be gen z. Might be the kids they raise. But we'll see.
Are you both sidesing Hitler lol? We let him get away with a ton of shit to try and avoid a war.
No. far from it. and you're right. there was a lot of appeasement that happened. (Austria, Czechoslovakia. Poland...) and while france, the UK and the USSR were all down for appeasement... there were plenty of people who were very hawkish and wanted a more direct military confrontation- Churchill became a very unpopular figure for his opposition to Appeasement, for example. I'm also pretty sure Stalin himself outright hated Hitler (I do know Hitler hated Stalin with a passion... including fucking over their momentum to break the non aggression pact. Ostensibly they needed oil. They could have steamrolled the middle east, who were armed with ww1-era cast offs. his military leadership wanted to do just that.)
US became Isolationist after ww1, but even before the war, FDR was hawkish- but restricted by the neutrality acts. Which he flouted all the same to supply China against the japaneese in '37. FDR did manage to get some concessions the acts (like cash-and-carry); and eventually got them repealed with lend-lease. As much as Americans showed up late and took credit anyhow. (heh.) one of the critical factors leading to an allied victory in ww2 was the allied industrial output. IIRC, the US alone was outproducing the entire Axis- for examples, the US commissioned 140 carriers and 18 or so battleships (we dove head first on carriers,) Japan had 15 carriers and 10 battleships. we similarly outpaced them on subs (though our subs were very different than the German raiders.) we also outpaced on tanks, aircraft (fighters, bombers...) weapons. munitions.
Something to think about... because I see a lot of parallels with Ukraine, and the Spanish Civil War. Including that both HItler and Putin are not mere assholes. but assholes.
I'm also pretty sure Stalin himself outright hated Hitler (I do know Hitler hated Stalin with a passion...
They were both keenly aware that their alliance of convenience was only ever going to end in one of them trying to consume the other too after the convenience ran dry. You don't stop at conquering half the world.
In the UK they implemented the NHS, State pensions and national housing.
The boomers are doing their best to fuck all of that up for us though.
My cousin does it, but he makes 6 figures, so hes not exactly the most struggling person. Basically if you work a regular ass job, the likely hood of being able to afford rent alone is pretty low.
Typical rent in my city is like $1000-1500 for an entire 2 bedroom house. Even my brokest friends have their own place.
San Francisco or NYC? Enjoy your 150sqft shithole for $3k/mo.
Not necessarily. Rent is cheaper in places that have enough housing to meet demand. It's easier to have enough housing in less desirable markets, but it's certainly not impossible to meet demand in a desirable market too. Chicago has median rent under $2k as an example of a major city without this problem.
Chicago isn’t the bastion of desirable place to live. Sure it’s a major city, but it’s really only viable in a few industries and the weather is abysmal.
Look towards either coast and you’ll see more moderate climates being a lot more expensive.
Chicago is absolutely a desirable place to live, half of my friends moved there or are planning to move there. It's the 3rd largest city in the USA, and while the winter weather sucks, it has head over heels the best urban design I've seen in an American city which more than makes up for it. I'm curious as to what industries you wouldn't be able to make a career in in Chicago? They have a significant presence in just about every major industry sector except local natural resource extraction.
Regardless, it's not desirability in and of itself that makes coastal cities expensive, it's shit housing policy. Demand exacerbates the issue, yes, but the root cause is that there are more people trying to live there than housing units available. NYC for example is building less than 30% of the housing units required to meet demand. It's not because there's nowhere to put them, these units have already been designed, planned, and submitted for approval, but most of them will get buried in red tape, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism.
Outside the USA, it's much easier to find desirable, affordable cities. There's plenty across Europe and Asia that make American coastal cities look like hovels. Tokyo is the prime example, but outside the USA, cheap housing in major cities is more of the norm than the exception, with some outliers like London. I just randomly picked Berlin, a city I know nothing about other than it's a fairly major one in Germany, and median rent for a 1br apartment in the city center is around $1400 equivalent. I wouldn't say that's cheap, but it's nowhere near as outlandish as SF bay area or NYC.
Both my gf and I could pay our expenses on a single salary and we're far from rich, we just made the decision to live in a town of under 10k instead of a city of millions...
Edit: I find it very funny that I get downvoted every time I mention that living comfortably outside major city centers is possible... If everyone that's now 100% remote moved to smaller towns, cities might even become affordable to live in!
I mean.. I couldn’t afford my own apartment until I was in my late 20s and all the places I lived in until my 30s were shitholes.
Okay, how old are you now? Give me a ball park?
Also, does everyone have to have a shitty time because you did?
Your experiences don’t invalidate other people’s.
I don't think they were trying to invalidate the experience of Gen Z. Just expanding by saying this has been an issue for decades, this isn't 'news' to anyone under 40.
You're not complaining that things haven't gotten better; your complaining that renting single is something other generations had which has been taken away. It isn't.
No generation has had a majority able to rent alone until they enter mid career. I'm middle-class, American Gen-X, and I had the same experience op did.
Housing has gotten worse. I wasn't able to afford a house until I was in my 30's, and had a wife with her own income. The boomers were an exeption, not the rule.
I do feel as if housing is even less affordable than for Gen X, and is getting steadily worse, but renting has always been this way.
Also, does everyone have to have a shitty time because you did?
Literally putting words in my mouth.
I'm in my late 30s. Regardless that's a bit of a leap on your part to suggest that sharing my experience is invalidating others. It might be somewhat invalidating the narrative the article is putting forward however, but that's probably warranted.
Point is that this has been a problem for a long time. Is it worse now? Sure, rents are even more insane than when I was growing up and pay still sucks. But needing room mates was a thing for me and the majority of my friends growing up.
This isn't a new problem like the article seems to suggest. Also historically there's a greater precedent for people living in shared spaces than not, if we're being fair.
It was too expensive for me, a 28 year old, 10 years ago.
Absolutely no way I could have afforded an apartment on my own and it's only gotten worse since then.
Article title is “Renting alone in Miami is too expensive for Gen Z”.
That aside, it does have some interesting statistics about Gen Z moving back home and Boomers moving to apartments.
Those 80s sitcoms were not people living alone. Three's Company, Bosom Buddies, Perfect Strangers, Mork and Mindy, etc were all people living together.
I knew 2 dudes who rented alone. Both of them lived in shitholes and paid a fuckton for it.
It has ALWAYS been too expensive for the vast majority of Americans to rent their own place, for ALL the generations.
My greatest/silent generation grandparents never had their own places.
My boomer parents never rented their own place solo.
My Gen-X ass has only rented my own place for 1 brief 6month period in a VERY low cost of living area, and then again for a couple years after a divorce at which time I was 20years into a very high paying career, so I don't think it's a terribly valid example for the majority of Americans.
I'm not saying housing costs aren't too high, they absolutely are! But this is nothing new. And frankly it's annoying to keep seeing it posted and harped on constantly as I see it as a distraction from real issues that need to be addressed in the areas of housing costs, pay and healthcare costs that need to be fixed.