Will They Call Me ‘Boomer’? An ‘older millennial’ Catholic wonders if he’ll be viewed as privileged

Like many millennials, I have enjoyed the stats, memes, and videos about how the cost of housing has increased so much and the privilege the baby boomer generation had in coming of age in an era where typical workers could afford a home and family.  But as I look at my own experience and the increasing cost of living, I wonder if someday the memes will be pointed at my cohort.  Will Gen Z look at the lower cost of living I enjoyed in a critical period and think of me like I think of baby boomers?  

Among millennials, there is a frequent suggestion that different age groups of millennials are really quite different. Those of us born in the early 1980s who experienced frustrating AOL dial-up Internet busy signals--and who capitalize the word Internet--are so much different than younger millennials who grew up in the high-speed Internet era as digital natives and never used a phone book.  Of course, thinking a fifteen-year generation needs to be subdivided into special groups is probably the most millennial idea ever.  But I do wonder if older millennials will someday be viewed by younger millennials and Gen Z with the scornful jealousy my generation directs at Baby Boomers.  The numbers may justify it.

In 2012, I bought my first home for about $60,000 in Grand Rapids, a mid-sized, Midwestern city.  This was a modest (i.e. not nice) home in a modest (i.e. really not nice) neighborhood, but it was far from the worst neighborhood in town and was not the worst home on the block.  This wasn't a fixer upper, at least in the context of its neighborhood.  It wasn't nice, and my in-laws were ashamed of it, but it was ready for moving in.  It was an easy decision since my ~$400 mortgage payment for a three bedroom house was less than half my rent for a two bedroom apartment.  Simply put, I had a mountain of student loan debt, and buying a house helped me to save money that ultimately allowed me to pay off my loans. 

In 2021, a later owner sold the house for $205,000 (with no notable alterations other than painting the front bricks an ugly color).  Today's Zillow estimate values it at $280,000, which seems roughly accurate for the market.  The price of that house went up 450%, with higher mortgage rates too if a new person were to approach it as a starter home.  This is in a Midwest, mid-sized city, not some Sunbelt boom town.  The city’s population grew 3% in that intervening decade.

We all know that wages did not keep up.  The starting salary for the job that brought me to town went up about 20% in the same time period that the house went up 450%.   Also, tuition at the law school I graduated from almost doubled in that time period too.  The stats definitely show a large gap between my experience and that of the baby boomers, but the gap between older millennials and the later waves of my own generation, let alone the next generation, may also be notable.

I don’t have solutions, though as Catholics I think we should work towards solutions.  Friends tell me that this is the fault of private equity funds buying up single family houses, inflationary impacts of dual-income households replacing the single-income family lifestyle, or a flood of aspiring landlords buying up single-family homes.   As I get into my Cadillac wearing my brown (real) leather jacket, maybe the young folks have the right to look on me with contempt for that low-cost home I bought that gave me the first step onto the middle-class ladder of home ownership.  Maybe the opportunity I enjoyed as an older millennial is closer to that of the baby boomers than the economic mess that is coming for younger folks. After all, I did literally walk uphill both ways going to school for part of my life. 

J.C. Miller is an attorney in Michigan.