Home but Not Exactly Alone

Looking at the above map, it’s pretty easy to figure out that “young people” tend to live with their parents longer when they live in cities and states where housing is most expensive. “Kids” in big cities cherish living closer to work, having the latest smart phone way more than owning a car. Cars take parking spaces, cost lots in maintenance and insurance, fuel prices are high and even buying a car is a luxury that is easily replaced by mass transit embellished with Uber and Lyft.

For younger workers, or even slightly older workers building sweat equity in start-ups, rent in hot urban work centers is often prohibitive and long commutes are career killers, so convenience even at with the mutual inconvenience on all sides is the easy button. Does that mean that the old house rules from the teenage years still apply? Sex? Bringing a lover home with you in your parents’ house? Weed? Alcohol? How about single parents who are dating? Awkward! Some prefer sardine-stacked apartments with lots of roommates instead.

California has some of the most expensive cities in the country. San Francisco. Silicon Valley. Los Angeles. Orange County. San Diego. Ouch. “Statewide, roughly 37% of Californians age 18 to 34 live with their parents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

“In [Mission Viejo, a wealthy suburb in south Orange County, a] pricey part of Southern California, where the average home is valued at well over $700,000, about 55% of young adults shack up with mom and/or dad… ‘[My wife and I] had an apartment here for two years,’ said [said Jacob Ostheimer, a married 24-year old who lives with his mother and stepfather]. ‘But I was spending like 30 grand a year in rent, and I could have had that in my savings right now.’

“Despite a booming economy and sizzling job market, millennial, and now Generation Z, Californians are as likely to live at home as young Californians were a decade ago during the depths of the Great Recession.

“‘This has, I think, surprised many of us, including myself,’ said Richard Fry, a senior researcher with the Pew Research Center, who says he expected multi-generational living arrangements to decline as the economy recovered… ‘Clearly in certain areas rents have gone up and the cost of living independently has increased.’

“Here's everything you need to know about the roughly 3.6 million Californians living with mom and dad into their 20's and early 30's. Yes, including the sex stuff… California is not the only state with a high rate of young adults living with mom and dad. The living arrangement is equally common in high-cost states such as New York and Massachusetts. In New Jersey, an astonishing 46% of 18- to 34-year olds stay with at least one of their parents, according to Census Bureau data.

“Looking at where in California young adults are living with their parents explains a lot about the reasons why. Somewhat counterintuitively, expensive urban cores in places such as San Diego and San Francisco actually have relatively low rates of young adults living at home, owing to the large numbers of twenty-somethings who shack up with roommates to defray housing costs…

“Not all of them are so young. About 1 of every 4 Californians between 25 and 34 live with their parents — around 1.5 million people, according to a CalMatters analysis of Census Bureau data.” LAist.com, August 27^th.

But it’s not all 20/30-somethings working at hot jobs in expensive urban centers. Some Z’s move back to their lower income family homes to help add essential earning power to impoverished minorities. “Stay-at-homers are more likely to be male than female, are more likely to be a person of color than white, and are more likely to live in an immigrant household than their counterparts who have flown the coop…

“Beyond the financial benefits of living at home, cultural differences in the stigmas attached to staying with parents — and feelings of obligation to family — also contribute to the trend. Nearly half of California Latinos between 18 and 34 live at home… ‘[Hispanics] tend to have higher levels of what we call familism — high regard for family, obligations to family, closeness to family members,’ said [Jessica Hardie, professor of sociology at Hunter College, CUNY], who researches young adult living arrangements.” Laist.com.

In the end, these trends represent dramatic shifts that have occurred over the past two decades. Upward mobility is all but dead, polarization and income inequality defined our entire society (even as to home ownership), marriages are being postponed and student loans now top $1.4 trillion, way more than our aggregate credit card debt. Welcome to America, land of opportunists.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and as our President brags about how wonderful our economy is, it’s clear he is basing his claim on average statistics, which always soar when those at the top make so much more than the rest of us.