
There is a growing trend in rental housing that has begun to shake up the market, co-living. The concept stems with millennials and offers an affordable place to live with other residents, but not in the usual roommate sharing notion from the past. Politico’s Max Blau says this miniboom signals millennials are demanding new solutions for the housing affordability issue. In these co-living spaces, owned by companies like HubHaus, the landlords also provide cleaning services, host happy hours, and furnish common areas. They also offer flexibility to transfer from one property to the next, whether in a current city or across the country.
Over the past decade, as millennials have flocked to large U.S. cities, they have seen wages lag behind the rising costs of living. Faced with credit-sapping student debt, Americans born between the early-1980s and mid-’90s have waited longer to get married, buy homes or have children. More likely to rent—and devote a higher portion of their paychecks to rent—millennials are also more likely to be socially isolated than past generations.
Even in the nearly 2 million-person San Jose area, where median household income exceeds $100,000 thanks to a humming job market, the dream of home ownership is increasingly elusive, with prices rising faster here than anywhere else in America. That’s left many employees of the world’s largest tech corporations—plus the teachers, firefighters, and police officers serving Silicon Valley—in a dilemma: Either make lengthy commutes or devote a disproportionate amount of their salaries to live near their jobs.
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