Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 142 posts

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#71

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aschearer wrote: post #33

I live a few blocks from a highly rated high school. The elementary school is next door. The middle school isn't far, either. Point being, this is an excellent place to raise a family. That being said, with one or two exceptions all my neighbors are retired with adult children or grandchildren. (Not living with them, to be clear.) I can't fault my neighbors for deciding to stick around in their nice, large homes with…

Having more people without kids live in good school districts is probably why those schools are so nice. Perversely, filling them up with families whose kids would actually use the schools would have the opposite effect (this only applies to states where education is funded locally, in states that fund them state wide, not so much).

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#72

Post by tennisflyi »

thejteam wrote: post #8

I wonder how much of this is also due to either an unwillingness to live with someone or difficulty making friends? I know that where I live the rent on a 1 bedroom apartment would be difficult for most young people, but half of a 2 bedroom apartment would be do-able at minimum wage. For reference, I am thinking 1500 and 1800 per month respectively for rent on 1 and 2 bedroom apartments, which seems to be the going r…

Where/how do you find quality roommates, maybe multiple times? Most websites that do so seem empty/slow/only want female roommates (weirdos).

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gumballindie wrote: post #19
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

I don’t think society has yet realized the cascading effects this will have on fertility rate and compression of the demographic pyramid.

Oh in Europe politicians dont care that the local population is declining. The US tries to solve it by banning abortions, but that’s going to cause more issues than solve. In Europe they just welcome anyone and then put them on benefits. I am not against migration but those poor souls arrive in Europe to escape poverty and end up being poor here because they face the same challenges as the locals.

> The US tries to solve it by banning abortions

This is not why the US is, or more accurately some states in the US are, banning abortion. It is very much a moral thing for them: they want to punish sex before marriage, especially for young girls, or maybe they really do believe fetuses are sentient, but it definitely isn't about promoting population growth.

America has had a higher immigration rate than most of Europe for a couple of hundred years now.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#74

Post by wait_a_minute »

mikestew wrote: post #68
wait_a_minute wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The later one starts in life to have children the fewer, if any, they will have. How do you know this? > That might be true if it was a choice made to save money but instead it's not a choice and there isn't any money. I’m betting savings rates will go up.

Not parent commenter, and no offense intended, but some things one should be able to mentally walk through on your own without someone feeding you a link. In this particular case, for example, there’s an upper bound on how late in life a couple can conceive. Take it from there.

Likewise, it doesn’t hurt to take your own advice - an aspiring young man does not need to rush when he has offspring, and can plan to successfully have healthy children for most of his life even into his 50s. I ask questions to lead people into challenging their own assumptions.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#75

Post by genman »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #13
genman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, most people, including politicians, are completely incapable to understand exponential processes and how fast population decline can occur and how difficult is to recover from it.

Politicians are the real estate owners and they understand exponential processes just fine. Their kids don't pay rent but receive it.

And who is going to pay this rent when population will drop?

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#76

Post by willcipriano »

nix0n wrote: post #63
willcipriano wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School quality is overhyped, what they are really measuring is student quality for the most part.

> what they are really measuring is student quality for the most part That doesn't make sense to me. What sort of forces do you imagine will cause one school to have better students than another, consistently for decades?

Schools serve a particular geographic area. Geographic area predicts your economic class. Economic class predicts if you went to preschool, if you were read to, the quailty of nutrition you received, the probability that you had lead windows in your bedroom, if you live in a single parent household, etc.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#77

Post by MontgomeryPi2 »

atonse wrote: post #15

(Genuine questions, please don't misinterpret as negative judgement): How much of this is actually new as far as income vs costs, and how much of this is unwillingness to make sacrifices that older generations did? For example, in my 20s (20 years ago), it was very common for 20somethings to live in shared housing with 2-3 roommates. They would share kitchens, fridges, everything. And these houses weren't even that g…

My son found work last year in a seaside town, I helped him in finding an apartment over summer timeframe. I looked online in the usual places and there was near zero apartment inventory which I though was odd. Then I pulled-up AirBnB and there were hundreds of listings, all unaffordable of course. He did eventually find something, but only a 6-month off-season rental unit. Next summer will be same issue.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#78

Post by nix0n »

aantix wrote: post #14

I'm surprised with remote work we haven't seen a resurgence of the small town. Towns within an hour of a bigger city, but small enough where the real estate is still reasonably priced. Maybe when this young adult generation starts to consider kids, this option might become attractive.

> within an hour of a bigger city, but small enough where the real estate is still reasonably priced

This is more rare than you would think, depending on your definitions of "bigger city" and "reasonably priced". It's definitely more rare than it used to be.

Part of that is the increase in housing prices, as detailed in this and other articles. But part of it is a contraction of what's "within an hour", due to crumbling public transit infrastructure.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#79

Post by nostrebored »

JamesBarney wrote: post #61
nostrebored wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing has had a real appreciation at a rate that far outpaces real median wage increases. This is fueled partially by incentives to buy homes, but largely by speculative real estate purchases by older generations. People over the age of 35 own nearly 85% of real estate in the U.S., with people over the age of 55 owning nearly 45%. In both of these categories, ownership is extremely overrepresented and trending up.…

You need to distinguish between the market for houses and the market for housing (which includes rentals). Speculative real estate purchases and home buying incentives have a much larger effect on the market for houses vs the housing market. But the housing market is what drives the cost of leaving home. With zoning and building codes we've just made it a lot more expensive to build housing. Just building codes proba…

I don’t think you’re wrong — I just think that zoning is primarily driven by viewing houses as a speculative asset rather than a functional good.

Re: Why can't today's young adults leave the nest? Blame high housing costs

#80

Post by hotpotamus »

ozr wrote: post #35
atonse wrote: post #15

(Genuine questions, please don't misinterpret as negative judgement): How much of this is actually new as far as income vs costs, and how much of this is unwillingness to make sacrifices that older generations did? For example, in my 20s (20 years ago), it was very common for 20somethings to live in shared housing with 2-3 roommates. They would share kitchens, fridges, everything. And these houses weren't even that g…

A pathological sort of comparison is much more common now. They assume that what their parents have (with 20+ years of work), or what they see on social media, is what they should have too. That they don't is perceived as a great injustice. You can see someone that has what you want and either a) work towards it, or b) complain. There's always a mix of both, but b) is very loud right now.

Or perhaps they think they should have what their parents had 20 years ago when they were children and their parents were in their 20's?
Post reply on HN