If housing feels impossibly expensive, one answer is that a smaller home, a less in-demand place, or a slower climb may simply be part of starting out and working your way up. But what if getting the house that has long stood at the center of the American Dream also pulls you farther from the jobs, family, community, or daily life you actually value? Continuing the conversation from Kevin Klinkenberg’s Messy City Podcast episode, “Is the Housing ‘Crisis’ Real?”, Chuck Marohn sits down with Kevin, urban designer Camille Cortes, and architectural designer Sheinya Joseph to ask whether younger adults can still follow the path his parents took toward the American Dream. If homeownership is still possible, what are people actually willing to trade to get it?
Hey everybody! This is Chuck Marohn. Welcome back to the Strong Towns podcast. The American Dream describes a path as much as a destination. Today, we're going to discuss whether that path, one that earlier generations followed is still available for younger people. My friend Kevin Klinkenberg recently devoted an episode of his Messy City podcast. By the way, I've told everybody they need to listen to the Messy City podcast. If you're not doing that, you should be. He told the story using his parents as a starting point. His parents began with very little, bought small homes in modest places, lived frugally, and gradually improved their circumstances as their family and income grew.
Kevin's argument, broadly stated, is that this path is still available, but it may require accepting a smaller house, a less fashionable location, greater frugality, and a more gradual climb than many young people now expect. To me, that raised a really important question: Have younger people become too pessimistic about what's possible, or has the housing system eliminated many of the modest entry points that made the earlier climb possible? I think it's important to frame this conversation by acknowledging that I'm a married 53-year-old Gen Xer. I've got two adult kids that are both in college. Obviously, as a family, we've had the conversations about their future and what's going to come next for them in life. I'll admit that it feels different than when I was their age. Things have changed.
I've said many times, if you're not frustrated with the generation ahead of you, and you're not a bit bewildered by the generation behind you, you're probably not paying attention. I suspect in our conversation today there might be a little bit of frustration expressed and a little bit of bewilderment expressed, but everybody here is of good spirit and generous, and we're all going to assume the best intentions of each other and try to get at something approaching deeper insight. So, joining me first of all, the person who started this off, Kevin Klinkenberg. Kevin is an urban designer, planner, architect based in Kansas City, Missouri, where he serves as the executive director of Midtown KC.
Now, he spent more than 25 years working across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, with a particular focus on creating walkable, sociable places. He is the host, as I said, of the Messy City podcast, which you should be listening to, and also the author of the book Why I Walk. Kevin, welcome back to the Strong Towns podcast.
Thanks so much, Chuck. Looking forward to it.
I'm happy you're here. Also joining me today and all of us is Sheinya Joseph. Sheinya is an architectural designer based in Washington D.C. She's the president of the Emerging New Urbanists. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Miami, yay, and has worked across urban design, multifamily residential architecture, and commercial retail architecture. Sheinya, I know you're feeling a touch under the weather. I'm so grateful you decided to join us. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the Strong Towns Podcast.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Finally, we have Camille Cortes. Camille is an urban designer based in Portland, Oregon, where she works for DPZ, which is obviously the best place to work. She studied architecture and ecosystem science policy at the University of Miami, and has worked in urban design, historic preservation, charrette planning, and climate resilience. She also co-founded the Place Initiative and has contributed to community design projects and international master planning competitions. Camille, welcome to the Strong Towns podcast. It's so great you're here.
Thank you so much, Chuck. I'm so happy to be here and excited for the conversation.
Kevin, I want to start with you because you set the stage here. What do you think younger adults are missing about the economic path that your parents followed, and why do you think that is maybe still available to them today?
That's a great question. I wanted to start that podcast in many respects because I see so much pessimism in the air generally about housing and about the American dream broadly speaking. I see this from all directions, so I'm not picking on any one type of person or political viewpoint.
I see this all around me, and I wanted to reflect on the life that my parents led, which I felt was a tremendous, very happy life, and trace the arc of where they started and how they went through housing, because I felt like their story was a great story, but also, while unique to them, also very indicative of probably millions of people in their generation, and especially those who grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II, and probably lived a pretty frugal lifestyle, and so I wanted to trace all that, and then ask myself the question, is that still possible today?
That's why I eventually got into some local examples, just looking at my market, trying to understand what housing is doing in my market, and could somebody still have a similar sort of starter home experience the way they did, and just by way of reference, for example, we ultimately had a family of six at one point living in a three-bedroom, one-bath house, and money was tight, things were tight, and my parents often lived in an interest rate environment like you and I remember, Chuck. That was substantially worse than it is today. This is the other thing that is so commonly heard today.
You hear, "Oh my God, mortgage rates are 6% or 7%." It's just so high, and it is high relative to where they were five years ago, but from a historical standpoint, they're actually very modest, and I know that doesn't give a lot of comfort to a lot of people who may be looking for a house in a certain market today. But I really wanted to frame that discussion. I think part of what that led to is that there's a lot we could talk about related to this. We can talk about it specifically in terms of housing. We can talk about it as a mindset, but I think there was definitely a mindset in my parents' generation that was a little bit more of a long-term mindset than is common today, and that's when my parents passed, I wrote about this talking about how we are different as kids than they were, and my kids will be different than me.
So I'm not sharing a lot of judgment on that, but they definitely had more of a mindset that you take steps throughout the course of your life. They got married young, they had kids young, they got a starter home young, and they knew that there was a progression they were going to go through in their life, where they hoped they were going to progress, and that ultimately is what happened for them, and there's an awful lot about today that I'm just not as certain that progression to that mindset still exists as much today, and I see this with my own younger relatives in my family. There's an expectation of a certain really nice lifestyle right off the bat. But I also say that knowing, Chuck, that you and I have talked about this many times.
If you were to tell me that the housing system is doing what it should be doing, I would say absolutely not. There's a whole bunch of stuff that needs to change. So I was trying to thread a little bit of an awkward needle there: there is all this stuff that I agree that is broken and needs to change. At the same time, there are many markets in our country where you can still live a life like my parents lived, and really have a long, happy life doing it.
Camille, I want to go to you, but before I do, Kevin, just for context, and I realize that it's not always the most polite thing to ask, but because we're talking intergenerationally, I thought maybe it would be helpful to get your age too. I said I'm 53. I think you and I are very similar. I might be a couple years older than you.
I'm actually older than you. I'm 56.
Oh, okay. Yeah. The age of your parents that you talked about, where would they have been in relation to World War II? Were they born after World War II, before World War II? What was their experience with World War II?
They were born in 35 and 36.
Okay, they were young.
They were old enough to remember and have that memory of the Depression and the war, but not so old to really be immersed in it.
Okay, Camille, I want to start by asking your age, if you don't mind, so we can have that context. I'd also like your immediate reaction, because you listened to the podcast and Kevin's thoughts. I share the idea that when I hear people say, "I want to live in Manhattan. I want to live in D.C. I want to live wherever," and I see abundant housing in my neighborhood that's actually really affordable. Now I live in a very small town, and people say, "There are no jobs there." I haven't found that to be the case. Can you react to the initial kind of idea of Kevin's podcast? Maybe that's the best place to start.
So I really enjoyed listening to it, Kevin, and it especially resonated for me, thinking about my own parents. My mom's family migrated from Cuba in 1970 when the Castro regime came in, and they lost everything, their parents' business, and they really had to start from scratch. They were a very large family of seven, so that struggle of getting to where they are now, and the same was true for my dad. His mom came from Cuba just before he was born through the Peter Pan program that allowed orphans to travel and stay with families, and knowing about their upbringing and how much they struggled being in really large families really shows the story of how families rely on their network, and it's just a very slow journey of building generational wealth.
But luckily, my parents were able to build that for me and my brothers, so I'm one of three, and we are much better off than my parents were. But I do think: Do I have the same access my parents had when they bought their first house in 1990? Not at all. I'm of the position that, maybe I do fall into that camp of being a pessimist, but I've thought that I'll never own a home and that I'll have to rent for my entire life. But I think that is hugely in part because I am attracted to large cities with a lot of energy. I've lived in Miami and New York, and now Portland. Those costs are astronomical. Thinking about what my parents paid for their first house in 1990, I asked what that would cost today for me. I did a little research to understand what that would look like. They bought their first house for $100,000 in 1990.
So 35 years later, that would be worth 250 grand. When I looked at what was around, what houses were around for that much, it really wasn't much. So there really isn't enough supply. In those areas, even on the outskirts of Portland, the homes were very deteriorated and not in great areas. In a large city, forget it. It's really hard for me to make ends meet paying rent, just as my friends are in Miami. It's just the prices are just getting too high to keep up with. So, I think that's my reaction off the bat. I did want to add quickly, though, I think just in general, something that's different with our generation than priors is that young people are seeking to live in the city core more than they were in the mid-20th century when families were flocking to the suburbs and trying to live the American dream. So I think the trends are pretty different now. With other housing trends, it's just becoming extremely difficult.
Sheinya, I'm going to come to you in a minute with the same exact question. Camille, you didn't give us your age, and I feel I'm walking a fine line here because I don't want to be impolite. But you could give us a range if you don't want to give us.
Oh gosh, no, I was not avoiding the question. Sorry, completely forgot. I'm 31.
Wonderful. Okay, so this is quite a story. Your parents are still alive. Are your grandparents still around?
Yes, some of them, or just one.
What an amazing story. Sheinya, go ahead. I'll give you a chance to talk about your reaction to the podcast and any opening thoughts you might have.
Yeah. So I very much enjoyed listening. I think the most interesting part is that my story is a little bit different from Kevin's story in terms of most people have parents that have purchased homes and then eventually moved up the ladder, whereas my story was a little bit different. My parents also immigrated here around 1998, and they were renters for my entire childhood, and they are still renters today. So I didn't necessarily get to see the process or progress of what homeownership was like, and to me, being in a rented home my entire childhood, that was stability to me. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, we never bought our home," or, "This doesn't feel like a real home." That was what felt normal. It wasn't until I grew older (I'm 27 now) that I realized, "Oh, homeownership.
People actually want to attain that." So, for me, I think things are a little bit different now. Having the direct comparison of being a renter currently and my parents still being a renter, costs have doubled, and what we were able to support on a one-income household, with me, my brother, and my parents is no longer what can be supported nowadays. So, even as a working professional, and I live out in the Bethesda area, which is a major work transportation hub, it is very expensive to live there, so the income that is required as a working professional, we are still able to qualify for additional help just because we're not able to meet market rate housing.
Back then, my dad was not a professional; he was a school bus driver, but he was still able to pay rent, make ends meet, and me and my brother grew up in a comfortable living environment. So I think it is very different today. I don't want to lean towards the pessimistic side either, but it brings me to the question: What does stability look like today?
Sheinya, if I could ask one follow-up, where did your parents move to when they came to the United States?
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Oh, okay. So they rented in Cambridge. Do they still live in Cambridge?
They do not. So I was born in Cambridge, but at the age of three, we moved to Saugus, which is a suburban town, maybe 15 minutes north of Boston, so that's where they still live. That's where I spent most of my childhood.
Okay, let me ask what I think is the intergenerationally sensitive question. Camille, I'm going to start with you, and then I'll go to you, Sheinya, and then Kevin, I'll let you give some follow-up thoughts. You've both described living in very popular, high-amenity cities as being, in a sense, the desire and the default. Part of what I took away from Kevin's podcast because I know some of the places that his parents lived. They lived in Austin, Minnesota, which is the place where they make Spam. It is not a glamorous city in any way.
I think one of the challenges, speaking for myself, maybe not for my entire generation, but is this idea that there are only a handful of cities worth living in, or that we will live in, but yet I can't afford to live there, and so to me, I've always interpreted that as: I am willing to forego homeownership to live in this place, as opposed to obtain homeownership by moving to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City, even Minneapolis, which is a great, great city. How should I understand that trade-off? As someone who has lots of equity, my monthly house payment is very cheap. My mortgage rate is really low. I am the person that is sitting in a very comfortable position, having bought a house in the 1990s to start with. So I realize I'm in a privileged place right now.
I'm trying to understand what is the thought with that trade-off, and why is the alternative, say Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cleveland, or Cincinnati, not attractive? Camille, I'll start with you.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great question, and I think that for many people, and this was the case for me, larger cities have more career options and networks, and that's where opportunities are concentrated. So I naturally gravitated towards some of those larger cities because of my network. Going to those more affordable cities has a large trade-off that is not totally in sync with how our culture is changing. At least for people around my age, sociability is very different in the age of social media, with lots of new restaurants and dining experiences. That's not necessarily how I live my life, going to the most expensive restaurants and whatnot. But I feel like so many people I know live their lives being seen and what they're doing. I think that's, in part, where the energy is going.
I think the question that I struggle with is what am I missing? Because what you've just described feels like a conscious trade-off. I've decided to, in a sense, forego opportunity A to pursue opportunity B, which I value more, and I feel like I can accept that, but why isn't that a trade-off? I mean it genuinely, curiously, not accusatorily. How should I understand that trade-off in life? Basically, going to a more affordable location, whether that's city or outskirts of a major metropolitan area. I'll give you the prototypical example. To me, there are a lot of younger people I meet who say, "I want to live in Manhattan, and I'm really ticked off that Manhattan isn't affordable." I talked to someone the other day and said, "If they made apartments for $200,000 in Manhattan, I would buy one and just go there four times a year.
That would be awesome. Kevin and I would go in on one together and trade off going to Broadway plays." There's no circumstance in the world where Manhattan becomes affordable by building more units. So to me, the choice to live there is a lifestyle choice to forego homeownership and, in a sense, affordability in exchange for getting to go to Broadway plays, go to nice restaurants, and live this lifestyle. What am I missing with that analysis? I feel like that's overly simplistic, and I would like to understand why that's overly simplistic.
I definitely get what you're asking. By the way, I should just point out that it just happens that I'm moving to Manhattan in about six weeks. My family's in New York.
To be fair, too, I'm not asking you to speak for an entire generation of people. I'm asking you to give your impressions.
Of course. So I think that in that question, the important piece that is not coming up is the fact that there's an assumption that housing elsewhere is widely accessible, and I think it's not. One of the points I was making before is that the entry point to getting into the housing market is much lower than it has previously been. That trade-off, I think, has a much larger deficit of what you would be losing out on, or what you're trading. So that inherently just is not attractive.
Let me ask Sheinya the same question. I wonder how you would describe this trade-off and what maybe I'm not grasping or not understanding about it, Sheinya.
Yeah, I'm okay making that trade-off because I don't necessarily view homeownership as the only measure of financial success or a good life. So for me, owning a home isn't exactly my top priority: Would I like to own a home? Yes, but I think if the cost of achieving it is moving somewhere I don't want to live, then I'm not going to choose that. I think I would rather be in a space where I have accessibility to culture and to more social life and transportation, and be closer to my job, because either way, I don't think that either option is good. I think they both have trade-offs. If I move far away, sure, it might be more affordable, but if I'm still working in the city, that cost is going to be rolled into transportation or other things.
Growing up renting my entire life, I didn't see that as an issue, and I still don't see it as an issue. Homeownership is a very big commitment, and there are trade-offs to renting that you don't have to deal with when you're a renter versus a homeowner. Does that answer the question?
Yeah, and I think also maybe expand a little bit because in a lot of these high demand markets, one of the troubles with renting is that you never do build equity, and the rent keeps going up, and it's very high, and it's very difficult to save for the future when you're squeezed on rent. Is that a trade-off that makes sense to you, considering that as well?
It is. I'll speak for myself personally because it feels like homeownership is a longer-term goal and not anything short-term. I'm willing to sacrifice not having that extra money to save in order to enjoy the area that I live in. I think for me that is a primary priority.
Kevin. I want to ask you to follow up a little bit here too. I feel like you and I use the example of a $200,000 condo we could buy together in Manhattan. I think you and I are both lovers of cities. I enjoy going to New York. It's fantastic. It's lots of fun. If you told me I could have a place in New York that I could afford, I would love to hang out there and go to baseball games. I would love to do that in Minneapolis. I would love to live next to Target Center and have Timberwolves season tickets and watch Anthony Edwards mature. I can't really do that, so I drive down to three or four games a year, and it's a lot of fun, but it's a different situation. How do you think about that trade-off yourself?
Well, I think both Camille and Sheinya have really accurately described a trade-off that millions of people have decided they want to make, and I get it. You're right, we're both urban people. We love cities. I just took my family to Chicago last weekend, and we spent four days wandering around Chicago and doing all sorts of fun things. By the way, we went to Wrigleyville. Of course, we had to wander around there. But so I understand and get the preference for being in a really cool city and having all those amenities at your fingertips and that lifestyle and how much fun that is, I totally get it. I get how desirable that is.
I've actually been presenting to audiences for 30 years that this is an important slice of the market that is growing generation over generation, and it's a real thing, and there's a lot of people who just prefer to choose that lifestyle. So I get it. I think where we're headed in that conversation where you started, Chuck, is everything's a trade-off, and the most popular cities in the country, and the most popular neighborhoods within those cities, are always going to be more expensive to live in because they're so desirable. You accept a trade-off by choosing to live there that you're probably going to be sacrificing something else.
One of the things that I didn't know coming into this that I really appreciate, Camille, you talked about your family and your grandparents coming here and your parents, Sheinya, you talked about your parents and their experience. It feels like to a degree we all value family. The junior high here in Brainerd, Minnesota, where I went to junior high, is now my office. I met my wife here. We dated through high school and college, and we got married right after she graduated. We were 22 years old. I've been married 31 years now. This December, it's awesome. I love my wife. I love being married. It's been fantastic, but it certainly made my life trajectory a lot easier from a young age because I never had to pay for a place on my own. I never had to struggle as the sole breadwinner or figure out a roommate situation or anything like that. After I got out of college, I just didn't have to. Kevin, I don't know how long you have been married, but I suspect it's decades now.
Well, my trajectory is different. I got married pretty soon after college at 24, got divorced at 30, and then remarried when I was in my 40s. So I'm one of those where, in a certain sense, you could say I got married late and had kids really late. So I have eight- and 10-year-old kids right now, which is pretty young for a 56-year-old guy. In a sense, I had a little bit of that because right out of college, I had a spouse and we lived together for a number of years. But then I was single and on my own and living in a city at the time. So I guess I got a little bit of a taste of both trajectories.
My wife, who I tend not to talk about much on the podcast, someone told me the other day, "You never talk about your wife," and I feel like my wife is her own professional thing, and I just try not to drag her into all my stuff. But I will talk about my wife for a second. She's a news reporter. She's had a very successful career. She works for public radio now after decades of doing print journalism, but I recognize and understand, not just from talking to my kids, but from talking to some of my colleagues here at Strong Towns, that marriage trajectory, marriage work trajectory, is just different today. It just seems different. Sheinya, I'll start with you. Maybe that's the question I'm getting at.
I realize you probably can't say, "Well, here's what's different," but maybe just describe how do expectations around family, marriage, career, geography, how do those things impact Kevin's story of his parents? When you hear that story, do you see yourself or people in that generation actually being able to participate in that, or are there other things about just our culture and society today that make that path difficult?
I'd say the biggest difference is that the timeline of adulthood has changed, marriage, kids, career milestones. They don't necessarily happen in the same order or at the same age that they did in previous generations. So for me, that matters because housing typically gets tied pretty closely to those milestones. You get married, you buy a house, you have kids, settle down, and today I think people may prioritize education, career growth, travel, living in a city, and maybe simply even figuring out themselves before marriage and children. I think I can definitely speak to myself when I say those things, and even talking with friends or other folks within Emerging New Urbanists, those are the things that we're prioritizing.
So we're making housing decisions as individuals for longer, rather than immediately as a household with two incomes and a long-term family plan. So I think that also changes what's attainable. It is expensive, but it's also fitting a different version of adulthood than it was before.
Camille, I know that one of the things that drove my wife nuts when we were married for seven years before we had kids. Every time we would go to Christmas, her relatives would say, "When are you having kids? When are you having kids?" There's all this pressure. I'm not trying to put any pressure on you by asking you. I don't even know if you're married. I don't know anything. I'm wondering how your interpretation of career expectations and life expectations is impacting this story. When you listen to Kevin's story, I can picture my kids listening to Kevin's story about his parents saying, "That's so quaint. That's so nice. I could never do that myself." I'd like to understand if that's your reaction, and if it is, what's different?
I was thinking while hearing Sheinya speak, and even in Kevin's podcast, that I think back to when I was just a child, and I had these expectations of what my life might be when I grow up, and I told myself that at 25 I needed to be married and have all my kids, and now six years past that point, I'm thinking, oh God, I might have kids when I'm 40. I still want them, but, to Sheinya's point, I have been career driven, and that is so much of what I feel like young professionals are focused on now because the dynamics of family culture has shifted in general. To answer a little bit of what you were asking, and to just provide a little bit more context, I do have a fiance, and he has a 12-year-old daughter. So, he's also 15 years older.
So, I've been able to see for myself in these past years being with him, what he's been able to achieve in his life: buying a house in Portland 15 years ago and seeing that house double in equity, and I've been in a place of privilege to be surrounded by people that can provide me a safety net when needed. Although I consider myself pretty independent, and everything that I make for myself comes from my salary and pays for every bit of my life. So it wasn't something I was seeking. When I came to Portland, I was really just looking for something different, and at one point during COVID I ended up living in a household of four adults and kids, and that seemed like the best option at the time, but certainly not the dream. Maybe I'm going off on a tangent a little bit.
I've also had some experience with this through the Place Initiative, the nonprofit I helped found. I've been doing studies on co-ops as a means of having a different lifestyle that isn't just a singular home with your family nucleus, but it's really still about connecting with people in a different way, with a different kind of community and having shared spaces, shared amenities, and that being a life choice. So I think that the more different sort of supply that we have to choose from can really dictate what choices we make. So now that I'm moving back to New York, I've seriously begun looking at what a co-op would be like to live in, and they're really competitive. There just aren't enough, and you have to fill out applications and all that.
I haven't been of the mindset to tie my future equity entirely to owning a home because, in part, I feel like that's not the only means of building future wealth for myself, and I think I could potentially do that through stocks or whatever, and I think relying on housing as your main source of equity is not necessarily the right way to go about it. I like to think about my parents who own in Miami, and my brother and I shouting at them, "You have to sell the house. Do you not see what's happening? Yes, prices are skyrocketing in downtown right now, and all that.
But given what's happening with sea level rise and all that, I feel like the value of their home, which is where really all their equity is sitting in, is going to implode at any moment, and they won't have any of that equity that they thought they had." So I think that has jaded me a little bit and has pushed me from investing in housing.
Yeah, I want to stay with you for a second, Camille, because I want to ask you a question about Andres and something that he said, and I don't want to put you on the spot because I know you're at DPZ, which is amazing, which is a great place to work. I don't know if you remember this or not, Kevin, but back when we had CNU in Detroit, Andres Dwani made the case. He specifically said to young people, "Why aren't you moving to Detroit? This city is nothing but opportunity." He actually drew this parallel between the pioneers who went west in early America for open space and a chance to have your own place and make a go of it. Yes, it was hard, and yes, it was difficult. But the pioneer spirit of America prompts us to go to the great new place. He said, "The great new place in America today is Detroit. You can come here.
You can buy a house for $15,000. You can stake your own claim. You can work together and build it up." I'm not making his argument for him. What I want to do is say the reaction, Kevin. I don't know if you remember the reaction. I feel everybody there who was five or 10 years younger than me and below were super pissed at Andres. This was insulting to the max. How can you say that we're not adventurous? We're not hardworking. We're not pioneers. Sheinya, I'm going to come to you with the same exact question about Detroit. But let me ask you first, Camille. How would you react to Andres's challenge to young people, to see a place like Detroit as a place of great opportunity?
I was just feeling for the people in the room that reacted poorly to that, and thinking, yeah, he was having fun. He was in his element too. I've heard plenty of related stories or similar, but just thinking that there's something for everyone, and that often we need to be speaking at all angles to people, and not expect that they fall in a certain camp because everyone's preferences are different. I was just curious. I don't know if you said what year this was?
When would Detroit have been? It's probably about eight years ago now, around 2017. Sheinya, go ahead. How would you respond to that challenge?
Interestingly enough, I actually agree a little bit. So I went to Detroit for the first time last fall, and I genuinely fell in love with the city. I immediately thought there was a lot of opportunity here. So to hear that Andreas also said that a couple years ago is interesting, and it's not just in terms of real estate, but in the neighborhoods, the architecture, the small businesses, and the possibility of developing incrementally, I think, exists there. But I also think that there's a responsibility that comes with that opportunity that's presented, and I don't want to go into Detroit thinking, oh, this place is cheap, so I can come in and make it what I want. There's already a community there that has been building and fighting for the city for decades.
So, I think the challenge for young people is to see places like Detroit as opportunities, but without treating the people there as obstacles to that opportunity. If that makes sense, so if you are going to invest, build, or start a business there, people should be asking how to contribute to the people in neighborhoods that already exist, but not what you yourself, who's going to Detroit, can get out of that city because it's ultimately not just about you.
Kevin, how do you think about the Detroit question?
Naturally, I love that Andreas loves to provoke. I'm in a midwestern city that is part of what we call flyover country, just like you, and I love that framing. Personally, I feel there's incredible opportunity for young people to make their own way, make a life for themselves, create anything that they want to create, and not just Detroit, but so many cities that are similar around the country. I think, Chuck, if I take a step back and think about some of the things that have been said here, it's interesting how culture really impacts economics. Economics is not just a simple sum game about there's five houses and there's six people there, so we need one more house. Everything that Sheinya and Camille are describing is really how the culture has changed.
So, vastly more people are going to college, who then tend to concentrate in certain areas of certain cities because there's more opportunity for college grads there, people getting married and having kids later, people wanting a more urban lifestyle, and all of that contributes to the housing equation, which has just not been able to be flexible enough to keep up with that demand from that group of people, and that's a little bit of what I'm hearing.
I've always had this question. I don't think it's an inferiority complex, although I'm open to someone interpreting it that way. I know why I live in Brainerd, Minnesota. For Camille and Sheinya, if you don't know, I live in my hometown. It's two and a half hours north of Minneapolis, Saint Paul. It is 14,000 people, so it's a small town. If you look at a map of the United States, the Canadian forest comes down into Minnesota and then turns into the prairie and the rolling hills that you get in Iowa and Missouri. About half an hour into that forest is where I live, and it's beautiful. It's lakes and woods. I think it's one of the most amazing places to live in the country, but my parents live four miles away. My wife's parents live 10 miles away. When the kids were little and we needed help, they would come over and help.
They're now at an age where they need my help, and so we go over there and help them. I'm deeply rooted, and I recognize that if my family lived somewhere else, I probably would not have made it here to Brainerd, but I often look around and think, "Gosh, there's a mansion up the road from me for sale for $400,000. A mansion. A railroad magnate used to live there. It's on the river. It's gorgeous. There are beautiful houses all through my neighborhood that anyone working remotely could buy and have a really high-quality lifestyle. I go to lots of plays and musicals and not just here in town. I've been to Hamilton. I've been to Hadestown. We go to Broadway sometimes. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything in life." So when I ask people, here's a house for sale next door to me. It's $250,000. It's gorgeous.
Would you want to live next door to me? Then you can come over and sit on my porch, and we'll talk about planning and Strong Towns, and I'll bring you some Christmas cookies, and we can hang out, barbecue, and be friends. They say, "I would never live in Brainerd. It would never cross my mind. I would never want that." I've always struggled with that as the response. I don't expect you guys all to explain this to me, but it's one of these things where it's always been a bit bewildering to me when people would say, "I'm not from Manhattan, but I want to live in Manhattan, and I'm really, really mad that it's not affordable. But I would never, ever, ever consider living where you live." I've struggled with that, and I've not been able to reconcile that in any of the dialogue that I've had over the years.
If you want to respond to that, that would be fine. I also have a final question I wanted to ask, and I think Camille, I'll start with you. I was wanting to ask if you were to give advice to someone, and my kids are 20 and 22, so they're not quite out of college yet. The older one wants to be a doctor, so she's probably got a number of years left, and the younger one is doing physics and also has a number of years, so they're going to be joining the workforce in the next five years, let's say six years. If you were to give advice to young women of that age, or young men, or whoever, what advice would you give them right now today in terms of their career, their expectations on housing, what they should look for, what they should be, how they should be thinking about as they approach that post-college phase of their life?
I would say that they should be looking at an array of housing types. There are so many more options out there than what we're typically used to seeing elsewhere, since most people are mostly familiar with the single-family house. There are such great options for living in a triplex, duplex, townhouse, and that is generally more affordable. So I would say that in part. Also, start saving your money now. I wish I started saving more seriously when I was 20 or 22.
Yeah, Sheinya, how would you answer that? What advice would you give to someone who's maybe a few years away or just entering the adult workforce?
Yeah, and I also want to answer your previous question before I answer. I think there's a huge psychological piece that's playing into why somebody wouldn't want to move to somewhere they haven't ever heard of versus somewhere that's popular, and I think we've sort of been taught maybe through social media that certain cities represent certain successes and possibilities, so if someone were to say, "Oh, well, why don't you just move two hours north or somewhere cheaper?" It can feel like they're essentially asking you to move away from the life that you're trying to build. Not that that's a justification, but it really got me thinking. I think we have perceptions of areas that we haven't actually experienced, and that plays into our thinking when it comes to that.
But for the advice piece, I would say don't let just one factor drive where you move to. Don't let housing costs, as with me being in the DMV area, or your career make the entire decision. Really take a step back and think about the kind of life that you want. What do you want your day-to-day to look like? What kind of community do you want around you? Do you value a quieter day or city life? Really think about that. I think if the places we live fulfill us, that gives us greater drive to stay in that area, and that makes those trade-offs more valuable. So I would say that, and with Camille, I would agree. Start saving as early as you can. But I will say, and this is probably not the best advice, also experience and live your life. I started saving super late.
However, the money that I did spend early in life gave me life experiences like traveling and doing other things that I might not be able to do ten years down the line. So find the right balance that works for you.
Kevin, I would ask you the advice question. I think it's a good one. I wonder what your parents would say. I know they passed away recently, but I wonder, if they were looking at this and weighing in, what their impressions would be?
I can tell you certainly what they told us as kids, and then what they told grandkids and other nieces and nephews and that sort of thing, and it was pretty standard fare advice for I think probably people of their age and their generation, which was: go find a good-paying career. Find the best-paying career that you think you want to do.
You tripped a memory in me when I got out of college. I don't want to interrupt you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. When I got out of college, I had three job offers: one was from the state Department of Transportation, and two were from consulting firms. I took the one at the consulting firm. My grandfather was only mad at me twice in my life, and once was when I didn't take the job at the state. He said, "You're a fool. You're a fool. If you went to the state, you would have a job for life, and instead, you are taking this other consulting thing for less money. By the way, that would have been his advice."
I was thinking back. My mom used to say to me, she said one of two things: I should either be a lawyer or, in her words, go into computers. Something people said in the 80s, and incidentally, she was probably right about that. I chose the worst-paying profession with architecture being my choice. So, in terms of making more money or having a living, she had good advice. But they were very steadfast in their beliefs to find a practical, good-paying career. Buy a house when you're young, save your money, and always put 10% or 15% of your money away, save it for the long term because you're going to need it when you're older. They were also big travelers. I described that in my podcast. They had an incredible curiosity too, but traveling for them was a different scenario than it is for me and my wife. Now we're world travelers.
They were travelers around the United States, and so everything was a different scenario than how we have it today. But I think the advice would have been pretty similar about basic advice that you might hear all over the place about how to have long-term financial success in life.
As a closing thought here, I want to let everybody get any last thoughts they have on the table. I want to say before we do that, Sheinya, I'll start with you. I feel like you all have been very generous, Camille, Sheinya, Kevin, and I know each other, so this was always going to be friendly ground. I promised you that this would be friendly, and I hope we've stuck to that. I hope you feel like we've been engaging and trying to understand. I want to make sure that you get an opportunity to say any last thoughts that you feel are unsaid or confused, or this old guy I'm talking to doesn't understand, Sheinya. I'll start with you. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to add to this conversation? I appreciate you being here. It's been very fascinating. Thank you.
Well, first of all, thank you for inviting us to have a seat at the table. Oftentimes, as younger voices, we don't partake in these conversations. So it's very valuable to also have you, Chuck, and Kevin, and that way we can learn from each other and also talk about intergenerational concerns. That's the way to move forward nowadays. The last thing I would say is I don't have it all figured out. We don't all have to have it figured out, and there is not one correct path. But we can all agree that the housing crisis is an issue, and the more we talk about it, talk to peers, and learn from each other, the more we're taking the steps to move forward and partake in those conversations. So, thank you, Chuck.
Sheinya, thank you for being here. I really do appreciate you taking the time and being willing to do this. Camille, any last thoughts you want to make sure that we hear.
Yeah. Thanks for asking. I wanted to add a couple of things to the last few questions that you asked. Sheinya, you had said something that sparked this idea, which is just the importance of getting things out of your system. I think a lot of people, when they graduate from college, that's the point in their lives where they move to the big cities or tend to, and I think that is extremely important to do, or at least it was in my life.
I ended up moving to Manhattan years after I had graduated college, in part because my brothers lived there, but it had always just been an idea in my mind, and I feel like I couldn't really be comfortable living in Portland at the time until I had that experience, and I think, having lived there for two years, I still feel like I haven't lived as much of that life as I wanted, and still feel like I haven't gotten it out of my system, which is driving me back. But maybe that's just because it really is home in my heart, thanks to family.
But another thing I wanted to say related to where you live now, Chuck, is that sometimes the smaller places are not what they seem from the outside, and it's because the people who live there are the ones who really know how special it is and are part of that community and feel that connection to the people that are there, which is a really amazing thing about living in Portland. It's so spectacular. One of my favorite things about living here is how everything is so centered in being local, and people having such a passion for that, and really embracing that local craft.
I miss that when I go to larger cities than this one, so I think that every place has something special about it, and I just wanted to add one more thing related to some of our other conversations, which is one of the initiatives we have at the Place Initiative, the nonprofit I'm a part of, is called the Climate Receiver Places Project, where we are looking at disinvested cities across the country and how we can help them and have them become climate havens for migrants, and we've had the opportunity to go into small places in Kentucky, specifically the Floyd County area.
One thing that we heard from residents or the locals there is that they feel that there's so much that's special about their place that they wish they could be better at marketing to young folks because it's just so hard to retain young people there and these places that have such great bones that were very popular cities back in the day are so hard to get off the ground again. I think the economy is a huge part of that, and thinking about that in our profession as planners, architects, or all that is how can we help really tell the stories of these places so that others see how special they are.
Camille, thanks for being here. Thank you for agreeing to do this and taking the time and adding your thoughts. I really am grateful.
Thank you so much, Chuck. It's so great to be here.
Yeah, Kevin, go ahead. Any final thoughts?
Great conversation. I really appreciate you doing this, Chuck. Great to meet you both, Camille and Sheinya. There was also a companion piece that just came out recently by Alan Malick. On his blog, he wrote a really interesting piece related to this topic called "Homebuyers and the House Price Squeeze," and, being the person he is, he provided a much more in-depth, data-driven analysis. But I just want to recommend that I think there's a lot of spicy stuff in there for people to read and take away. So I'm always in a weird position because, like you, Chuck, I'm a huge advocate for the middle part of the country.
I love this part of the country, and I think it's filled with really great places to live, and it makes me sad when I see places that are struggling in this part of the country, and especially young people who leave this part of the country and never come back. At the same time, I didn't go back to Marshall, Missouri, where I went to high school, population 12,000 people. I left Marshall. I ended up in Kansas City eventually, and so I understand the desire for being in a place that has more and has more of what you want, but I think it's really great to expand your horizons about what the possibilities are in our own country and in our own cities. We all tend to eventually end up in our own little bubble, and there's a lot of stuff outside that bubble that is still really terrific.
I feel like it's a weird time for me and any of us here in Kansas City, Chuck, because all of a sudden, for a place that has been off the radar for my entire life, all of a sudden now we're in the international spotlight largely because of sports and the World Cup and Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift and Ted Lasso and all. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous the amount of attention on our city. I still don't think we're going to be a boom place like in Austin or in Nashville. But it's amazing to see that happen. But I welcome it, and I think this is a great place to live. I think there are lots and lots of great places to live in our country that are not named New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles, and I think it would make our country a lot better if more people understood that and moved to some of those places.
So I know it's very gauche for this old guy on here to give advice to young people, but I really wish more young people would take up that challenge that Andreas had, and not just think about Detroit, but 1,000 other cities that are like it around the country.
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for doing the original podcast, setting this in motion, and agreeing to be here with us today. As a closing thought, first of all, thank you to everybody. This has been really kind and generous. I want to remind the listeners that none of us claim to speak for an entire generation of people. We're just giving our thoughts and our ideas. I hope if you pass this on or have your own dialogue about it, you are generous to all of us as we've tried to be with each other here. This is complex. There's a great melding of economics, culture, expectation, and human desire here. None of this is clear. None of this is anything but a bit messy. So we're trying to figure it out, just like you are. I hope you enjoyed and appreciated this conversation, and I hope that you'll talk to others around you about it.
Because I do feel like, if nothing else, having this dialogue and conversation is going to get us somewhere. Maybe just as a final thought, if any of you do want to be my neighbor, I've always promised. Camille, Sheinya, even you, Kevin, I would love to have you move to Brainerd. I promise you a big plate of Christmas cookies, summer barbecues. You can go out on my boat when it works, and if you live close enough, I'll even snow blow your sidewalks. How about that? So, thank you everybody for listening. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town. Take care, everyone. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.