High rents making living alone hard in metro Atlanta
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Forty-seven is the new 25, at least when it comes to living alone.
Why it matters: That's about the average age of a solo metro Atlanta renter, according to the latest census data. Many young Americans are splitting steep rents that eat into their income.
The big picture: Squeezed Gen Zers are moving in together or leaving big cities.
- More are returning to their childhood bedrooms: The number of Americans aged 25-34 living at home has jumped over 87% in the past two decades, per census data.
Zoom in: More than 250,000 of the metro region's millennial residents live with relatives, according to a November RentCafe analysis.
- 71% of Zoomers — more than 439,000 people aged 18 to 25 — live in multigenerational households.
Reality check: It's not just New York and California that are out of reach. Solo living is unaffordable in cities across the country, including the South, where rapid population growth in cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina could be contributing to higher rent prices, according to the Economist's Carrie Bradshaw index.
- In metro Atlanta, 15.3% of renters lived alone in 2022, compared with 17.6% nationally, census data shows.
Of note: Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development arm, offers several down payment assistance and homebuyer programs (with strings attached).
- In addition, school districts and developers are constructing housing to help teachers live closer to where they teach, Emma and Kristal write.