Yeah no kidding -- I moved out of my parents at 18 in 2006, and had a roommate all through univeristy and afterwards until getting married (and I couldn't afford my current flat without my partner's salary). Very few people I knew had a place to themselves, and if they did they were either scraping by, or they had help.
Right, does no one remember the ubiquitous TV show of young, modern life: friends? It had two groups of folks living in threes. Now, yes, their apartments were mansion-sized for New York, but the premise was still there, and that was the 90s. Heck, my boomer mother talked about how it wasn't uncommon for people she knew on the east coast of the US to live with parents until early 30s. '
This isn't a completely new phenomenon, but the percentage of the paycheck it costs to afford housing, even with a roommate, still seems to be on the rise.
Right? I had some kind of roommate every place I lived into my early 30s. And I’m GenX.
This is not a new situation, it’s rediscovering the wheel by this new generation. The boomers were probably the only generation that could graduate, grab a good Union factory job, and buy a small home in suburbia in their early 20s. Everyone else I know had a transitional period of working smaller jobs and sharing an apartment for a long time until they got a really good job or paired up and married.
In my father's case, he worked part time pumping gas at Sears and had an apartment with three friends while still paying for all of college in cash. The early 1970s were the place to be, apparently.