When my grandfather first arrived in Texas from the Slovakian area of Hungary he rented a single room in downtown Houston near where Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros now stands. A year later he sent for my grandmother and according to stories from one of my aunts the two of them lived and worked on a big farm in eastern Harris Country. They were seasonal workers moving around Texas wherever there were jobs back then, saving their money to buy a plot of land in Houston where they would ultimately build a house room by room. They paid cash for each addition until their home was finally completed. They would raise eight children in the impossibly tiny space and when the Great Depression came they would have no worries about losing the house because they owned it lock, stock and barrel. 

I was not even twenty when I married but by the time I was twenty five my husband and I were living in a very nice home near Hobby Airport in Houston. We paid on $19,000 for our house which had three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, a living and dining room, a den and a yard the size of a small park. While everything cost much less back then, we still appreciated the bargain price of our first home which left us with enough income to live a middle class life. 

Today’s young people are finding it much more difficult to find a place to live that does not stretch their budgets to a breaking point. In some parts of the country the housing prospects are even more dire due to a lack of available places to purchase. It is slowly becoming a kind of crisis as salaries don’t keep pace with rent or the purchase price of a home. Everywhere our youngest workers are wondering if they will ever be able to find a reasonable place to call their own. 

Back in 2005, my husband and I sold our first home with an incredible profit. We were able to trade up to a bigger house in a very nice neighborhood for not much more than the sale price of our old home. Today both our original home and the new one are valued at twice their worth in 2005. Our first house is valued at more than ten times what we first paid for it, while the income of those just starting out in their twenties is not equal to ten times what my husband and I had way back when we became proud purchasers of a house. 

The cost of living in Texas is definitely less than in many parts of the United States, but of late finding and affording decent housing has become a challenge for young adults even in the Lone Star state. It is estimated that someone earning the minimum wage of $7.50 in Texas would have to work three jobs just to afford a decent rental with one bedroom. Of course most individuals manage to gain skills or degrees to increase their earning capacity, but even those salaries can fall short of the needed funds to keep up with the inflationary costs of everyday necessities. 

In a city like Houston having a car is a must. That entails insurance, gasoline and maybe even payments for the vehicle. A one bedroom apartment can run over a thousand dollars a month or even more in a desirable location. Food, clothing, and student loans can stretch the income of someone with a bankable college major like computer engineering, so it is no doubt a challenge for anyone with less desired credentials. It takes a financial wizard to make ends meet and set aside savings for the future purchase of a home. 

I try to imagine what it must be like for someone in a place where homes are twice as expensive as comparable homes in the Houston area. Fulfilling the American dream of a house with a car is demanding two incomes and even then there may not be enough homes for sale to meet the demand. Cities and towns all over America are reporting housing shortages as our elder population lives much longer than they did even fifty years ago. They hold onto houses that they have owned for years. They pay a pittance in property taxes with homesteads. They have pensions and savings and few debts while young people are drowning in unbearably high costs for everything that they need just to get by. It is a situation that is forcing them to marry later and sometimes put off having families. 

My granddaughter is working for a small city government in Maine this summer. One of her projects is to research the housing crisis for the youngest wage earners. She has found that the problems in Maine mirror those in almost every state in the Union. The issues involve an imbalance between earning and costs as well as a shortage of housing that is available at any price. It is a trend that is growing but rarely mentioned until recently. 

A couple of summers ago my husband and I traveled to New Mexico in our trailer. While camping in an RV park I talked with a young man who worked in the office there. I mentioned how lovely the area was and opined that it would be a nice place to live. He quickly quashed my dreams, telling me that he was a thirty year old married man who worked two jobs along with his wife who also doubled up her working hours. Between the two of them housing was still unattainable so they paid his parents for a room in their house. They had been saving for years but the cost and availability of homes was so out of reach that they had never been able to finally get their own place or think about starting a family.

For decades there has always been an avenue for succeeding generations to do just a bit better than the ones that came before them. America was a place where families were able to own land and a house as long as they were willing to work hard like my grandfather did. Now that vision is vanishing for far too many young adults starting their careers and looking to their futures. Surely the housing issue is something that we must address much like the little town in Maine is attempting to do. In fairness to young people we need to be willing to find solutions and make it possible for them to fulfill the American dream of owning a home.