Buying a house has become unaffordable for many due to soaring prices, stagnant wages, and rising interest rates. Corporate investors snapping up properties shrink the supply, driving costs higher. Inflation erodes purchasing power, while student debt and living expenses strain savings. In hot markets, bidding wars push prices beyond reach. Government policies favoring landlords over first-time buyers add to the squeeze. For millennials and Gen Z, homeownership feels like a fading dream.
Buying a House Is Unaffordable for Millennials and Gen Z
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Ah-ah-ah Gen X choo. Ah-ah-ah Gen X choo.
I feel, I genuinely do, for the screwing over the millennials and Gen Z have gotten. Mainly because it happened to me. And a whole lot of Gen Xers. Among my peer group, the only ones I know of who own houses are the ones who had family to go to for the cosigning of loans, etc. You can take a lot more risks that get you further up the food chain if you know that someone can hand you a couple thousand dollars if you suddenly end up without a job because you’re “family” versus the poor bastard who has to sit there and take another “raise” that doesn’t even keep up with COLA because — all together now — “If I lose this job? If I storm off because of my ‘principles’ or my ‘dignity’? I will be homeless in a month unless I can find another job in something like two weeks. So I guess I have to sit here and choke down yet another heaping helping of shit.”
Among those of us who were clawing our way along without running to Mumma and Dada? We’re all in apartments or house shares. Or dead.
And following the 2008 and 2020 mass cullings whereby hard workers were magically transformed into lazy unemployed bums who don’t know that the way to get a job is to march right on up to the personnel department at the place you want to work and demand that they interview you (that’s what all the boomers tell me to do), even the people in secure (relatively) positions are scared to death at the thought of buying a house.
was just thinking the same thing.
Ted, concerning your podcast with Scott Stantis, the next time he lamely brings up his “stance” on Israel, might you suggest, Rashid Khalidi’s “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine”?
Ain’t capitalism wunnerful?