As we boomers aged, we avoided the Generation Gap that bedeviled our parents.
We didn’t disagree on the war. We let them indulge their passions. We tried to be friends and, while that wasn’t always a great idea, it did keep the peace.
But now that they’ve grown, that gap has finally arrived, in a way we never saw coming.
In a way it’s class warfare. Today’s millennials have less money than we boomers did. Most can’t afford a home. Many can’t even afford a car without help.
They’re not as heavily into things anyway. Their emphasis is on living. This is an over-generalization, of course. Some 30-somethings do have McMansions. Some own giant pick-ups. But most rent, and the rent’s too high.
My kids, like many people their age, prefer cities to suburbs. They don’t like lawns. They’re OK with apartments. They want to either work where they are or, at worst, within an e-bike ride away. They like density, ground-floor retail with 4-6 stories of wood-frame housing above, “walkable” cities with all the food, entertainment, and services they need within a half-mile away.
They want to remake our cities. They want bike lanes and density. This is one source of friction with local governments, which are geared to suburban or faux suburban living, everyone with their own car and multiple places to park it – work, home, shopping, restaurant.
Then there’s the whole idea of density, of owning vs. renting. I bought my home 40 years ago this August. I’m as committed to my community as the pig is to my breakfast sausage. YIMBYs, as they call themselves, generally rent. They’re committed to the community like the chicken is to that plate. If things don’t work out, they can move.
The result is a growing alliance between young renters and developers, who are anxious to knock down single-family homes and replace them with apartments. The developers don’t live here. The YIMBYs live lease-to-lease.
The “housing crisis” caused by higher interest rates is making things worse. When neighbors move, they often just rent out the old place. They might be back, but they become addicted to that cash flow. Some even go to AirBnB. This creates the change we oldsters fear organically. We no longer know the people on either side of us. It’s frightening.
In some ways this is just evolution in action. We’ll die. We’ll move. Or we’ll feel forced out by our fears and move to The Villages to die Republicans. The YIMBYs won’t inherit anything, the developers will.
I feel a sense of urgency when I call for changing the tax laws to encourage home ownership and discourage rental housing. We have made homes more liquid, easier to buy and sell. But those benefits should accrue only to the house you live in. If you want to rent, I want you taxed. It’s the commitment to a place that makes a city great, and when we lose that our kids will lose everything.
