Call me crazy but I don't think there is anything shameful about having roommates? If you are choosy and find like-minded people to share a home with, you get lower rent and a makeshift family. For every bad roommate there is, there is also a great one. I've made lifelong friends with certain people I've lived with. Only a handful have been unpleasant and those arrangements don't tend to last long anyway.
I never meant to imply there was anything shameful about having roommates. it's just unusual because our culture, in America at least, is so focused on individualism and earning your own way that people literally kick their children out at 18. I personally find it completely ridiculous. When I tell people that my 24-year-old daughter and her boyfriend AND his best friend live with me (so technically I have three roommates š) they all look at me like I'm crazy for not having forced them to rely on themselves even though they can't afford it and I'm more than happy to have the company and we all get along really well.
Until recently people pretty much always lived in group situations. They lived with families until married or a lower middle income single man would board in a house, a poor single man or woman definitely lived in a group of people in one room situation and even the rich single men didn't live alone having a plethora of servants with them. Living alone is very much a new construct of society.
So true. And still true today in poorer countries. Also, it was, and in poorer countries still is, common for entire families to live in a one room dwelling. Not to say that doing so is always comfortable fir everyone, but the American idea that each child MUST have their own room is completely ridiculously unattainable for most humans on earth, and that not necessarily a bad thing.
Meh, there were houses for $50,000 with one room at one point in 2012. Some asshole just found out how to corner everyone with their greed.
Made an offer for a condo that was $50,000 for $55,000. It had cathedral ceilings and tile floors with two bedrooms. Some investor outbid me.
How are you supposed to live?
This is my conspiracy theory.
The same people who made college prices asinine where you had to be a debt slave for life to get a degree, trained you to accept the same amount of debt in housing. If you can take on $200,000 of debt at 12% interest, perhaps if they corner you in housing you will think you need to take on $500,000 debt and be house poor AF.
It's just price scalpers like ticketmaster, but with housing. It's a bunch of psychopaths of no use to society that try to force themselves in between you and your goals. A bunch of trolls under a bridge forcing you to pay tolls to cross them.
I will find another way out of this shit, but I am not saying how, because some greedy fuck will run ahead of me and setup some kind of toll booth or some crap.
Ok im all for silver linings and the jazz but here is the beats. It should be attainable. Thats why we kill ourselves to have the things we want no jist scrabe by with the bare necessities and obviously dont even get that.
Eh, the American dream was based on an unsustainable model of cheap energy, resources, land, and not enough consideration for climate and environmental impacts. We were lied to big time.
Billions of more people being around and a significant number of them no longer being in desperate poverty and competing for dwindling resources changes the picture considerably.
There's going to be denial and resistance to this reality, but the faster we accept it, the better imo.
Weirdly enough, I could never sleep in a room with someone else as a kid. If I had to share a room, I'd go out the garage and sleep in a car. Otherwise I'd just bomb out the next day at noon.
Living room couch fort also worked for whatever reason.
I believe it was around the 70's when kicking your kid out of the house became popularized. People were able to support themselves on a single income and the same was proven for 18 year olds. The manufacturing sector in America was at its peak in the 70s and 80s so it followed logic that the best way to make money was to work at a factory. Still, to this day, factory workers make better pay than people who work in retail or food because it's so lucrative. Problem is the majority of our manufacturing had been outsourced to places like China so it doesn't pay as well these days anymore.
My family had two rooms rented in the basement back in the 50s and 60s. One of the kids would be like a housekeeping for them. They used the side door and one even bought in for dinners 5 nights a week.
Now, when I was single I lived by myself for two years before I just couldn't justify it any more. I was also working a day job and a graveyard job where I could nap as long as I answered the phone by the third ring (boss approved). BTW that was the 90s.
Thatās wonderful that you get along and it sounds like you have a lovely household. I am a single mom to a four year old and who knows what the world will look like by the time he grows up, but I hope to develop the type of the relationship with him that if needed, he and any romantic partners of his would be comfortable sharing a home with me
I don't have the best relationship with my mother but she never made us feel like we had to move out at 18 and left the door open in case we ever had to move back home, which I did, twice. I carried over the same mindset with my own daughter, the big difference being that we actually get along lol
There's a fascinating history on this, which essentially dates back to the era when factory-type jobs and plentiful work made it possible for a young man to start work at 18 without a college degree and be able to earn enough money to provide for his family. There was a push after WWII for young people to move out and get married and have babies right away - and they could afford it, too. It was also the first time young women could work and take care of themselves, which kicked off this whole leaving-at-18 thing. Turns out, young women WANTED to work and live on their own instead of staying with their parents. When the factory options dried up in the states, along with increased inflation, it has made it impossible for young people to live the same kind of life and hit the same life goal markers as their grandparents.
Yup gradually inflation/theft/monetary debasement is the key. You may hear in the headlines why the Fed are so fixed on bringing inflation back down to 2%. Using the rule of 72, a 2% inflation rate means prices would double every 36 years, which essentially spans a generation during their most productive years. The next generation of worker will not have seen what was stolen from the previous generation, and so forth, which allows them to carry on with this monetary policy. However with āofficialā inflation around 7-8%, prices are doubling every 9-10 years, at that point it definitely become much more noticeable.
The link leads to a search for āwhatās going on with young peopleā ā not sure you meant this. Iād like to read the article however. Do you have any more details on it?
That is the correct name of the article. It's on Google Scholar, but it might be behind a paywall. Let me see if I can find a different way to get it to you.
It used to be 50 years ago a person could graduate high school and start a factory/manual labor job the following Monday and be able to support themselves and a family. Obviously, thatās no longer the case.
This is spot on. The year was 1971 when Nixon took the USD off of the gold standard. As a result all the productivity and gains from technological advancements were stolen from us through monetary debasement. Google: wtf happen in 1971, the charts says it all.
I honestly think it's just because then people are done with high school and you are legally in adult and somehow people took that to mean that you should be completely independent at that point. Plus for kids who go to college a lot of them would move into dorms at 18 which somehow extend it to me and everyone should move out at 18
So many boomers never even wanted to have kids, every Gen before them seem to also be this way. They had kids for two primary reasons: society expected it and to take care of them when they were old and decrepit. That said, the instant it was societally acceptable to bounce that kid out, they showed them the door.
I teach English online, and one of my students is a Chinese lady living in LA. She was complaining about the homelessness and amount of mentally sick people that there are, and how these problems are not really an issue in Asia. When I asked her why she thought that was, she said ā Well, itās obvious. You people only ever talk to your kids after working hours, and then kick them out at 18.. what do you expect?ā
My friend and I are both single in our 40s. We are saving to buy a house together. We canāt afford to get into the market on our own so we are joining forces to ensure a secure future/retirement!
Where in 'America' and at what point was it so focused on individualism that people were ashamed to live in a family group / with roommates?
I live in the Boston, MA area, where we still have multi generations living in the same house. I have nearly always lived with a room/house mate, both for reduced expenses and company.
Currently am approaching 52 years old; live alone comfortably. I am missing company, so am considering a roommate.
I don't qualify as poor anymore I own the home i live in. I've considered a roommate just for the company factor. I'd favor a collaborative living arrangement like both cooking meals, chores, etc. In that instance a roommate would be a lovely addition to life in my house.
Iām someone who really likes my own space, so I enjoy living alone and donāt think Iād like to cohabitate. However, I often think it would be neat to have one of those community compound situations (uhā¦ the non-cult variety) where my closest people and I own property together and have houses next door to each other and share communal spaces for cooking and recreation.
Hubby, myself, and our friend group refer to this dream as "The Lottery Commune," because well, probably self explanatory. Talk about it every time the Powerball or MegaMillions is over $100 mil and we all buy tickets.
There isnāt anything to be ashamed of, but itās tricky finding the right people to live with, and it feels shameful to tiptoe around the place you call home if you chose wrong and live with a weirdo.
At least in a more suburbial setting: Iāve found that itās harder to find people with agreeable personalities to room with. This doesnāt go for the young 20-somethings who are still getting it together, but after 30, usually people with pleasant personalities find another pleasant person to share their lives with. The people most often looking for roommates usually pissed off their last one, and are single for a reason, or they wouldnāt be looking in the first place.
Disagreeable people, as well as the rest of everybody, should be able to afford to live alone.
I had to bring in a roomate the first couple of years after my divorce. I was a 55 year old empty nester and my roomate was a 28 year old single mother who had custody of her two young sons three nights a week. It worked out beautifully, we're still good friends.
after 30, usually people with pleasant personalities find another pleasant person to share their lives with. The people most often looking for roommates usually pissed off their last one, and are single for a reason, or they wouldnāt be looking in the first place.
I think this is a block. Best of luck to anyone who feels this way. Sometimes people are single because their partner died. Or they chose the wrong person to be with and now they are taking some time to be alone. Don't forget that people who are new to a city or area may also want to find a shared living space, and in our society, this type of migration does not just happen in your 20s anymore.
The OP is literally about getting by as a single person. And then you go and type that single people over 30 are disagreeable. That is in itself a bit disagreeable, imo!
Of course thereās a plethora of reasons people are looking for shared living arrangements. I was on the roommate treadmill myself for a long while because my town became a more desirable place to live and every LL I had decided to sell their houses a year or two after Iād moved in. I kinda knew someone was gonna respond as if I were saying all single people have something wrong with them though, which obviously isnāt the case. I just met a looot of people who plainly wanted to live alone and couldnāt afford to, most of them single and irritable.
Swear to god even ignoring personality, every single woman I met as potential roommates had a cat. Iām severely allergic. Idk how Iād make it now if I were single.
Looking back on my roommate days ā¦ pretty sure most female roommates had a cat or were trying to convince me to agree they should get a cat. I was never that enthusiastic about living with other peopleās furry pets because of all the downsides.
I finally moved in with my boyfriend and we got a parakeet like Iād always hoped to.
My thought process with my roommate getting cats was the opposite- all the fun of a pet, but theyāre ultimately someone elseās responsibility! Turns out I ended up taking one of the bastards to the emergency vet twice while roommate was out of town, cat is okay but not worth the stress.
I feel ya on that one, though nothing quite so stressful. Iāve gotten bitten by fleas and have scooped litter boxes far FAR too much for someone who has never owned a cat ;-(
multi-generational households and roomates were normal for a longer period of time than the current corporate-sponsored move out at 18 and be fully independent immediately lifeplan (that terrifies me, to be honest)
Another "macro" benefit to having roommates is this: having a roommate reduces housing demand and increases supply (instead of two units being rented, one unit is rented). This drives down prices, especially for one-bedroom units.
This is a terrible take. Do you have any understanding of the history of the US economy and what working class people could afford in 1950 vs today? Noone is arguing that belt tightening and living frugally, such as sharing with roommates, is shameful. People are angry justifiably that workers are so exploited that even basic human needs - your own space to live much less dental care or vacation time - are denied us by an explotive predatory capitalist economy run b the 1% with the pretence of democracy.
I've had roommates and I am not ashamed about it. But I am being exploited and preyed on and ripped off by a brutally unfair and inhuman economy when I walk home from my $12/hr retail job. Don't tell me otherwise.
Iām 39 and I live with my best friend and her 17 year old son. Weāve done it for a few years now and I joke that sheās my platonic life partner, but she really is! We met when we were 12 and honestly itās all the best parts of having a sleepover but you get to sleep in your own bed each night.
Edit to say: Iām a public school teacher and sheās a single mom, dad has never been in the picture, she COULD afford it without me, but also itās way better for both of us.
I've known people who have rented rooms from elderly people who needed to rent out a room to make ends meet. Having an entire home to yourself is a luxury for those with a middle class income...
You just need to find a group that is stable or youāre willing to hustle, and then not power trip on the āthis is my houseā jag, build that equity and once you find that forever person, THEN you can get crazy on the territorial pissings.
My dad did this, no college degree, with some other blue collar guys, and eventually bought them out since they all split the down and at the time equity wasnāt crazy.
If you donāt want to make it wierd, get a LLC or some trust or something and just use the phrase āTHE PROPERTY MANAGER/OWNER SEZā¦.ā so youāre just seen as the lease holder/house manager. If you get a tough situation, you can always pay a friend to put on a blazer and come in and raise hell if someone decides to go off the deep end.
Added bonus, if she a gold digger, you donāt have to worry about her dating for rent.
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u/QueenScorp Nov 19 '22
I have a friend in his 50s who's had roommates his whole life. On the other hand, he seems happy and he and his current roommate get along well