Editorial: Make Affordability a Top Priority
By • September 11, 2024 0 462
Members of the soon-to-graduate Class of 2025 who wish to live in an apartment in the city may have a rough go of things. While their parents and grandparents may have been able to have the time of their lives in their 20s, Gen Zers (and Millennials for that matter) who are living in Washington, D.C., are residing in the fifth most expensive city in the country.
The median household income is just over $77,000, but the median home value is approximately $682,000. The average rent for a studio apartment is $1,874 per month. There is a considerable jump for one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, with two-bedroom rentals going for $3,091 per month.
This means that if a grad just starting out wanted to split rent and have their own room with a roommate, they would need to spend an entire paycheck each month on rent alone.
Rents in Georgetown are even higher, coming in at an average $2,839 per month, according to Apartments.com. Apartments.com also calculates that, due to higher-than-average rent, to live comfortably one would need to make almost $92,000 per year. However, per Bankrate.com, the average projected starting salary in the U.S. for the class of 2024 was $68,516.
That doesn’t even consider current grocery prices and inflation.
How can recent graduates not only save for the future but enjoy the present? Local and national politicians should focus on affordability, because if young people are being forced to live far from the heart of D.C., the city will no longer thrive.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on a single night in 2023, 34,703 unaccompanied youth were counted as homeless, and 90.6 percent of those were between the ages of 18 and 24.
Improving salaries and wages, lowering rents and mortgage rates and curbing inflation are vitally important to the generations that will lead our country in the future. Let’s make affordability a top priority in the coming year.
