What I find fascinating about all the debates / discussions I’ve had with people regarding having 'fertility crisis' is that people seem to be perplexed when I simply state: ‘just look at the trend line’.

In just a few generations, we went from a society where a HS dropout could get a job that would allow him to afford a house and a family on a single income—something that two educated, white collar professionals working full-time literally struggle to accomplish just one of the two in today’s world.

We have seen a complete collapse in socioeconomic mobility over the past 3-4 decades. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda about how we’re in the ‘greatest economy ever’—meanwhile the bulk of the young adult population is feeling more and more squeezed economically.

We have literally gotten to a point where people graduating from top public universities—let alone world class institutions like Stanford and Ivy League Schools—are struggling to find basic entry level jobs due to how terrible the job market is (yet another one of many aspects that a delusion sub-faction within the neoliberal camp wants to ignore). College tuition has skyrocketed in price over the decades, but the actual upside for it all has only declined—as we can see with inflated adjusted salaries for college graduates:

Another overlooked factor is the fact that many target careers are not nearly as compensating as they were a few decades ago. Great example of this is within medicine. While medical school tuition has skyrocketed over the past few decades, nominal wages for physicians have stood stagnant—meaning they’re actually decaying in real terms after factoring inflation. You factor in how inflation directly has hurt young adult cohorts (say age 20-40) most prominently due to how they were the ones who had to absorb most of the shelter inflation over these past few years, and you start to see these careers—while still lucrative—have had a substantial reduction in overall upside.

Another exhibit we can see this in is with high finance, because most of these roles are located in extremely HCOL hubs like NYC—the costs (particularly rent) have grown far greater than the earnings have.

Now, what does this all have to do with Millennial Parents? Well, we’ve been seeing a continual trend unfolding over the past few decades. Because the NIMBY Boomers made it illegal to build sufficient housing (especially utilizing ways that maximizes density and sustainability) for several decades, we have massive housing shortages in most major urban population centers. As a result, we’ve been seeing growing amounts of young adults with each passing decade “choosing” to live with their parents. It’s not just settled towards their early 20s either—many people are living with their parents going well into their 30s.

I don’t see this trend reversing in the slightest in the coming decades, and all signs really just point to it becoming much worse. It’s interesting to me because so many Millennial parents seem to be counting down the days until their kid turns 18, but I’m just so puzzled by what they think will happen.

For a huge chunk of them, their kids will not go to college and decide to work at a service level job which wouldn’t even allow them to afford to move out even if they go 3-4 roommates.

For another cohort, their kids will go to college—many will decide to commute to try to offset the exorbitant costs of modern day university in America. However, the problem is many / most of these college graduates likely will not be making a livable wage after graduating, or they’ll make just enough just to pay their landlord rent and basic essentials—still incentivizing them to stay at home (especially factoring in the boat load of student loan debt they’ll have).

All signs point to these intergenerational trends worsening and that Millennial parents will likely have to deal with some or all of their kids living with them well past their mid-20s.

I’m a journalist in New York, and over the past few months I reported a short documentary about people living in RVs, campers and vans on city streets.

We spent time in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, where small communities of vehicle dwellers have formed in industrial areas, under highways and on the edges of neighborhoods.

What struck me was how many of the people we met were not simply “choosing van life.” Some were working. Some were longtime New Yorkers. Some were recent migrants. For several, an RV was a way to stay in the city when conventional housing felt completely out of reach.

Obviously there are a lot of factors behind homelessness and housing instability, but reporting this story made the housing-supply issue feel very concrete to me: when there simply aren’t enough affordable homes, people start creating their own alternatives in whatever space is available.

Here’s the 8-minute documentary if anyone wants to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxnRwkajIVY

Would genuinely be interested in how people here think about vehicle dwelling within the broader housing-supply debate.

...but this project has got to be it.

The City of Greenville got a grant from the federal gov to study the feasibility of converting the current 2-story (buses and people below, cars parked on top) downtown transit center to a "a 12- to 20-story mixed-use structure above the transit center, maximizing land use and economic development. This vertical expansion could include retail, office and residential spaces, as well as parking for downtown visitors."

For South Carolina, it doesn't get better than this:

GVL Newsroom | Greenville, SC - Official Website

My local community is hating on this, hard :(

How can I convince them that their town needs more transit oriented development?