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Comment by Eridrus | Hacker News Reader

One of the surprising things about poverty statistics is that you find that most people classified as living in poverty are families, because your expenses go up drastically.

Many young people - eg those making minimum wage - live with roommates or in studio apartments and don't really feel significantly disadvantaged by the fact that they can't afford a 1br apartment.

I say this not to say that everyone is doing fine, but that the details can matter a lot.

On a different note, for a fixed amount of housing stock, it is a purely positional good, you can't improve the number of people who can afford a 1br by simply paying people more, you have to build more, or enforce strict rent controls which makes it not a problem of income, but one of luck and inevitably corruption.

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This is a problem because you often can't just find a room to rent. Instead you have to lease an apartment with other people and be legally responsible for their behavior. It allows landlords to shift risk on to tennants because leases make everyone responsible for everyone else.

If someone loses their job or abondons the property (an almost inevetalbe eventuallity in a group of young people) whoever's left is stuck holding the bag to clean up the mess and pay more rent than they can afford, or get saddled with an eviction or abandonment on their credit so they can't rent again. It's like playing contract chicken. Also, many leases include maximum occupancy and/or charge more for more tennants, such that tennants are not legally allowed to reduce consumption to within their means.

In my hometown (in Alaska) the lowest rent was more then full time minimum wage. Ther was no road out of town, so you couldn't even leave if you couldn't afford a plane ticket to Seattle. Lots of people I know were sleeping on couches and in closets trying not to get caught by the leasor's landlord.

I'm guessing E.B. White was doing this before the Equifax era.

I recall an interview with E.B White who just, incidentally, as part of a larger answer, mentioned he roomed with, I want to say three, other guys when he first graduated college and moved west (to SF if I recall). That he had roommates at that agr seemed to be stated with nonchalance that he would use to set the stage, like, to mention he was eating lunch with friends when something interesting happened.

Is it unusual to have roommates after you graduate university in the USA?

In New Zealand it's considered normal to share a house until you have a long term partner who you move in with, then you find your own house.

I know people in their 30's who still share a house or apartment. It's a social thing as much as a financial thing, your roommates are like platonic partners.

This is common in the US.

I personally spent the following six months with 2 roommates and the next six months on a ship with 6 roommates in a room slightly larger that my parents' closet.

Since we're comparing stories, I spent 16 months living in backpacker hostels, including 12 months in the same one.

People always ask me how I managed to live like that, but they don't realise that you tend to adapt to your living conditions fairly quickly. If you can manage a couple of months, you can manage a year.

It's actually weird for me to live in a house with only a couple of other people now. I got so used to having people to hang out with practically on tap. There's always somebody to drink with, or watch a movie with, or snuggle up next to. It's strange for me to come home from work to an empty house.

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