#housing #YoungAdults #HighCostOfLiving #HousingPrices #parents
If you are a young adult, do you believe you will have a better life than your parents?
In decades past, and, perhaps, still today, parents’ goal was to give their child(ren) a better life than they had.
But, young folks today, in large numbers, don’t see that as a possibility.
Many of them still rely on help from their parents to get through daily life.
Remember last week, we talked about the cost of going to work? Now, we will examine one of the effects.
Perhaps this problem began as home prices really started to accelerate back in the 1970s. Many children who grew up in relatively affluent towns could not afford to live there on their own as adults. They could not afford the home prices or apartment rentals.
So, if they wanted to stay close to home, they moved to nearby towns and cities that were not nearly as affluent and had more affordable housing options.
Perhaps, they thought, someday they’d have enough money to move back to the town in which they grew up. Maybe, they could even inherit mom and dad’s house when they died. This was when living at home with mom and dad was, shall we say, less desirable.
Today, young people are really feeling the squeeze. The jobs they can get, even with a college education, don’t pay much more, figuring for inflation, than they did back in the 1970s.
But housing costs during those decades have ballooned. Housing that was unaffordable in the 1970s is completely out of reach today for young folks.
Even housing in the less affluent towns has become more difficult for young folks to buy, or even rent.
Add to that the rising cost of everything else: food, fuel, day care, education etc., and starting a life in one’s 20s today without help is nearly impossible.
Many in that age group are postponing marriage, children and other life expectations (at least their parents expect them) because of costs. Never mind that some of them are already burdened with student loan debt.
Today’s employers are not seeing young people coming into the workforce in droves because they can’t live on what they will be paid.
Companies are expanding and relocating to new environs, thus creating jobs. But few of the jobs they are creating will go to people who already live in those places. They will go to people who will move to those locales because of the jobs, which brings increasing property values that aggravate the problem.
As an aside, American retirees moving overseas to less expensive countries are pricing the young locals there out of some of their markets.
For many young people today, getting ahead financially is a somewhat foreign concept. How to survive, day to day, is a more pressing matter.
There are signs that wages are rising, contributing to inflation and creating an economic chicken-and-egg roller coaster for everyone.
So, starting an adult life is hard today. The idea of finding a first apartment, or house, that is affordable, then trading up over time may be foolhardy thinking.
A combination of public and private solutions to this problem are in demand right now. Perhaps the catalyst to solving this problem may lie in an idea no one has yet conceived.
Still, it’s vitally important for young people to cultivate and maintain optimism. You are the future. You, and your cohort, may be the ones to solidify that future for your whole generation.
Peter
Tag Archives: housing prices
HOUSING PRICES GOING UP, BUT …
#HousingPrices #AffordableHousing #HousingCosts
About a decade ago, we were hearing about people being forced out of their homes through foreclosure.
Today, we’re hearing about housing shortages, sky-high prices and high rents.
Rick Hampson tackled this issue in Los Angeles in an article for USA Today. It was also published May 20, 2018, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hampson’s article calls this time the second Gilded Age. The first was in the late 1800s, when industrialization of the U.S. brought many immigrants, mostly from Europe, attracted by higher wages here than in their home countries.
“In this Gilded Age, like the one at the end of the 19th century, the gap between rich and poor is widening: monopolies have more power over business; business has more power over politics; and politics are close-fought and hyper-partisan,” Hampson writes.
In Los Angeles, where the cost of housing is out of sight, you have the mega-rich and the homeless huddled together.
Hampson writes about affluent areas like Bel Air, where a wildfire revealed a homeless encampment among pricey homes.
We all would like to live where we want. We all can’t afford, perhaps, to live where we might want, so we settle for living where we are.
We all can’t afford homes worth, say, $500 million, like the hilltop mansion in Bel Air that Hampson says is bigger than the White House.
Some of those homeless folks might be mentally ill. Some might just be urban outdoorsmen, to coin a phrase from retired radio talk show host Neal Boortz.
Some might have been victims of the recession 10 years ago. They’ve lost their homes to foreclosure, and can no longer afford another one – or even an apartment in California – at current prices.
One may not aspire to live in a $500 million hilltop home, but there are many ways people of modest means can better their lives, with a few hours a week part time. To check out one of the best such methods, message me.
The gap between rich and poor may be widening. Builders are not concentrating their efforts on building “affordable” housing. They are concentrating on building large homes for those who can, or want to, afford them.
Hampson goes on to say what Realtors in L.A. are doing to entice buyers. One even includes furniture, decorations and champagne with a home she is listing, he says.
Certainly, one could read this and think that it’s over the top. Perhaps you live in a small town in the middle of the country and cannot envision this happening where you are.
But the point is that housing prices are going up just about everywhere – especially in and around big cities.
Amazon is scouting places for its second headquarters that promises to bring 50,000 jobs. But amid all this prosperity are those who have very little.
We have to hope that as some prosper, others will be able to use what they leave behind to build a life of their own. The answer to homelessness is building more housing. It won’t get every homeless person off the street, but it may help the ones who’ve gotten there because of bad luck, and who want to work to create a better life.
Peter