Boomers, Millennials and the American Housing Crisis

“Millennials Have the Children, but Boomers Have the Houses”

“Aging in Place, or Stuck in Place?”

These are two recent New York Times headlines on stories that ostensibly document different problems.

The first article explains that a large number of Millennials would love to buy a big house for their young families, but there aren’t many available. The reason: “Baby boomer households with no children in the home — own 28% of the nation’s large homes (those with three or more bedrooms).”

The second article describes how many older Americans are ready to downsize, but they can’t find a suitable home to buy.

These are not separate problems. They are connected, and it’s high time that we consider holistic housing policies to address these issues.

It should start with addressing the needs of older Americans. The second story I mentioned above, by Paula Span, begins by telling the story of a couple in their 70s who want to sell their four-bedroom house and move into a two-bedroom, single-level condominium.

That’s harder than it sounds. As Span writes, “Local developers are putting up four-level townhouses with even more stairs. The few suitable one-floor homes available get instantly snapped up. City dwellers fleeing Covid helped pump up housing prices.”

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies issued a report last year that dives more deeply into this problem: Fewer than 4% of U.S. homes offer the three key features most older Americans need for accessibility – single-floor living, no-step entries, and wide hallways and doorways.

Add it together, and it’s not that older adults don’t want to move — with no viable options, they feel trapped.

Meanwhile, as the first story reports, Millennial households with children own just 14% of the nation’s large homes. It’s not enough.

We don’t have housing policy in this country, both in terms of what’s being built and also the financing mechanisms that encourage it, that facilitates needed movement and fluidity in the market. And it needs to start at the local level, where planning and zoning laws can start to change things.

Change is definitely needed. Housing supply and demand are out of whack. It doesn’t reflect today’s realities — people are living longer, that changes housing needs, and everyone is feeling the results: Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and more.