Housing and young people – why is this not a solution?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah just sacrifice your entire 20’s to buy a sh***ty condo, great idea! Never date, never do anything fun, don’t start a family until you’re practically too old to have kids, just afford a freaking condo. LOL.

The better choice is to party like it is 1999 all your 20s then marry the schmuck who lived at home till 30 and saved every nickel.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Your "solution" to the housing crisis is for all kids to attend college, graduate and immediately make $100k, live with their parents until they are 30, and save half a million dollars?

You're a genius, OP. A real policy savant. Where should we mail your Nobel Prize?

Care to tackle peace in the middle east next? I'm sure you can come up with a solution - perhaps set a specific date and time for everyone to drop their weapons and sing Kumbaya?

There is no "housing crisis" only an entitlement mentality crisis. People seem to believe that they have a right to live wherever they want regardless of whether they can afford it. The world does not owe you anything and this mentality does nothing to help someone afford a house. The people that complain about housing affordability are the same people that pass numerous policies that actively worsen what they are complaining about, retroactive building performance/energy efficiency standards, costly building code updates, bond initiates for "affordably housing (which make housing less affordable by increasing property taxes). I don't want to hear from these people anymore. The only objective of density bros and the "housing crisis" crazies is to force everyone else to live in high density micro apartments. They are all front groups for developers and the real estate lobby and these industries will gladly destroy communities as long as it maximizes their profits

Working hard HS-----> college ------> workforce over the span of 10-15 years and wanting to afford a home (even a "regular" non-Mansion home) is not an entitlement mentality. It is what the American Dream promises and has delivered pretty reliably until recent years. Now kids work hard, or harder, and will receive/see less of a payoff in terms of home, retirement, etc. than the generations before them.

And that sucks to realize. They're angry and rightfully so. But it isn't "entitlement" so stop throwing that word around.

Peoples expectations are not realistic anymore. In 1950, the average new construction SFH was only 958 feet and the average household size was around 3.5 people (274 sq ft per person). The average size of a new construction SFH in 2023 was 2,469 sq feet and the average household size was 2.6 people (950 sq feet per person). The average sq ft per household member today is 3.46 times larger than in 1950. So of course home are less affordable when people expect to have 3x more space per person compared to recent history. Even for the more affordable condo units people have come to expect 600-800sq ft for a one bedroom unit when it could easily have 2 bedrooms or more. Most people don’t want to buy small units with multiple bedrooms anymore so developers don’t build them frequently.

This 1000%

In the 70s people lived in 3 bed/1 bath homes of 1000 sq ft. If lucky you had a 0.5 bath/powder room. Very few homes had a full 2nd bath. The kitchen was basic (not luxury) and so was the bathroom.
People's expectations of what they need to live have changed.

None of that matters. Developers are not building 1000 sq ft 3 BR/1BA homes because the cost of instead making a 4 BR/3BA 3,5000 sq ft home instead is nominal to the amount of profit they can make off the larger home.

Homes are being built to maximize developer profit, not create modest affordable starter homes.

it does matter. People complain they cannot afford to live now, not fully realizing that what they now consider "needs" were not there in the 70s. For example: most lived in a 1200-1500 sq ft 3 bed 1 bath home, many had only 1 car and the SAHP drove the other to work (or had a beater car to get around for one), most had ONE TV and didn't have cable/streaming/etc, you didn't get a new computer every 3 years or a new iPhone every 2 years (and pay $200+ for your family to have those phones), eating out was a treat every 2-4 weeks and often involved pizza--no Ubereatsing dinner 3-5 days per week, etc. All those extras cost $$$$.
And FYI-you can still find newer under 2K sq ft homes/townhomes or renovated 1970s homes that are smaller, it's just most don't want that. 20 somethings forget that their parents didn't live like they currently do when they first graduated---most want to continue living the life their parents provided them not realizing that it took 10-20 years to get to that point.

There is a lot of truth to this. My parents are mid 70s boomers and they mention in their days as young 20-somethings, back in the late 60s into the early 70s, there were no "cool urban neighborhoods." If anything, urban areas were starting to decline rapidly. Young college educated graduates lived anywhere they could find affordable apartments. And the apartments were basic, no central air, no elevators. No one had cable or internet. No one ate out at restaurants all the time or got takeaways, in part because those didn't really exist. Restaurants were either cheap diner style places or expensive places your parents might take you out to. In many ways it was easier not to spend much money, but people also didn't make much money either.

But the other part is that people got married much younger. My parents were married at 22, right out of college. Most of their friends married in their early to mid 20s. The wives worked while the husband went to law/medicine/grad school. Which meant that by late 20s, you had a working couple finished with their educations and typically already with some savings to buy the first house. And the first house was always a small cape or rambler for five years, then you'd move on to the "real" house where the kids grew up. And you also learned to do a lot of the home repairs yourself. My father was a doctor but still learned how to paint and basic repairs and do small plumbing fixes.

I won't claim the same route is still easily repeated today but variants of it should be feasible.