In today’s economy, a young person finding secure housing, let alone owning a house, sounds almost like a sci-fi premise. Where Millennials were sold the fantasy of a college degree, a nine-to-five job, and perhaps a house if all went well, Gen-Z seems to be looking clearly down the dark tunnel of minimum-wage service industry work that doesn’t even begin to square up against rising rental prices, grocery bills, college debt, and healthcare costs. While Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk debate colonizing Mars versus living in space stations, we can’t even find a place to live on Earth!

Housing Under Capitalism

In a system driven by profit, people having a secure place to live for the sake of it is a complete contradiction. The ‘American Dream’ of owning a house and raising a family doesn’t even work out on paper for people earning relatively higher wages. 82% of registered voters say it’s harder for current generations to buy a house than previous ones—this isn’t just a feeling, but a fact of life

The median price of houses sold in the US in the second quarter of 2020 was $317,100. In the fourth quarter of 2020, this rose to $414,000—an over 30% increase in the span of six months! This number has stayed high, going up to $442,600 in the second quarter of 2022, and now at $412,300. Median house prices are 6 times the median income now, which is up from two decades ago when it was between 4 to 5 times the median. 

This unaffordability is especially felt by young people, with those under 34 earning, on average, $54,000 a year. Nearly half of renter households, and 56% of black renters, pay over a third of their income in rent. With healthcare, food, education, and transportation costs on top of that, in what reality are we able to save money for a downpayment?  

Economists will chalk unaffordable housing up to interest rates being at their highest in 23 years. If interest rates go back down, working class buyers will once again face cash-flush investors prepared to undermine mortgage negotiations, pressure to skip home inspections, and bidding wars far beyond market values.

Interest rates are just one of many obstacles for young people living paycheck to paycheck in order to pay rent. Even if you manage to buy a house, home insurance rates rose 11.3% in 2023. This increase is largely driven by home insurance companies citing “extreme weather events” and not wanting to take the risk of insuring houses they know will be damaged by climate disasters.

So Where Are Young People Living?

Without an increase in wages that reflect the rising cost of living, or serious investments in affordable housing, we are forced to live with parents, find an unreasonable amount of roommates, or face homelessness.

Anyone who has lived with roommates or in insecure housing can relate to the mental health effects of having to subvert basic human and relational questions to an untenable and irrational economic logic. Domestic violence, toxic roommates, and unsafe housing situations will continue to be a reality for renters and young people who can’t afford to leave. We deserve a reality where we can make choices about our housing that aren’t intimately tied to the landlords’ and the real-estate industry’s hunger for profit. 

“Young People Just Don’t Want To Work Hard!”

Young people graduating high school today are generally faced with either entering an exploitative job market or, if possible, pursuing a college education. The average wage for a graduate who can find a job using their degree is $60,000, which is certainly a step up from minimum wage anywhere in the US. But any working class person that rents, pays for healthcare, and eats food knows that that number is wholly inadequate to live comfortably on.

To make things worse, the prospects for young people “using their degree” are at an all-time low. A recent report found that 52% of current graduates with a four-year degree are “underemployed”, meaning they hold a job that does not require a bachelor’s degree, with 60% of Black and 57% Latino college graduates not able to find well-paying jobs using their degree. 

Historically, the labor movement has fought for improvements in wages and working conditions for the working class, which opened up opportunities for young people to find well-paying union jobs even straight out of highschool. Union density today, though, is at a historic low compared to the height of the US labor movement. After a period of relentless attacks on unions in the past few decades, organized labor is beginning to find its fighting roots. Today 64% of Gen-Z report support for unions, which is reflected in the disproportionately young demographic of workers leading unionization campaigns at companies like Amazon and Starbucks.

Struggle For A System That Houses People

The Democrats and Republicans won’t offer a real solution. Harris’ proposal to offer $25,000 in tax relief for first time buyers is dead-on-arrival in Congress. What progress has been made has been the result of mass movements, like the socialist-led Amazon Tax in Seattle that won hundreds of millions of dollars from big business to build affordable housing constructed by union labor.

To even begin solving the housing crisis, we need strong rent control. A more lasting solution would come in the form of taking the big banks into democratic-public ownership, including offering (and rewriting) mortgages as zero-interest loans. We should seize the millions of housing units currently sitting vacant in cities across the US from the hands of corporate landlords. 

In addition, we need to tax billionaires and corporations to immediately build high-quality, permanently-affordable, socially-owned housing to bring down housing costs. But none of this will ever be acceptable to the capitalists. Ultimately, only a socialist society can guarantee prioritizing human need, not Wall Street greed.