The case for renting forever

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Speaker 3 I brought it up to you. I was like, well, what would you think if we moved in together?

Speaker 4 People who haven't bought yet, like me, feel like they may never be able to.

Speaker 2 Home ownership overrated. That's my take.

Speaker 2 I think they're here.

Speaker 2 Oh, hi.

Speaker 2 The other day, my producer Kelly and I went to a quiet residential neighborhood in DC to visit NPR host Aisha Roscoe.

Speaker 3 Yes, so I just picked them up from school.

Speaker 2 It's a two-story white and brick home with a front and backyard and pumpkins out on the porch. Inside, it's shoes off, homework out.
Aisha's sprinkling old bay on salmon for dinner.

Speaker 2 I need school yellow.

Speaker 2 I have yellow and gimmickscape yarn. I can be a little skeptical of the American dream, but honestly, when I look at Aisha, she's living it.

Speaker 2 She has a great job, an active social life, and she lives in her own home that's full of people she cares about and that care for her.

Speaker 2 And the key to it all,

Speaker 2 her best friend.

Speaker 3 No, she lost it, uh, yeah, before I care.

Speaker 5 I'm patronized.

Speaker 2 That's Jasmine Melvin. She and Aisha met back in college when they both worked at the student newspaper.
Flash forward 15 years, and between the two of them, they have five kids, ages seven to twelve.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they all live under the same roof.

Speaker 3 It's, we just come in, I make the food.

Speaker 2 I'm Jonquyn Hill. And this week on Explain to Me from Vox, we're rethinking the way we live.

Speaker 2 So, you may have noticed that the housing market still sucks.

Speaker 2 That means a lot of us are trying new things, whether it's moving in with your best friend, using old housing in new ways, or bypassing that white picket fence altogether.

Speaker 2 Our options have changed and we're changing with them. For Jasmine and Aisha, their decision to blend their families wasn't just a practical one.
It was financial too.

Speaker 2 They decided to buy that house together.

Speaker 3 We were both going through this transition in our lives. Like we had both gotten divorced.

Speaker 3 We were dealing, you know, trying to get our kids together and do all of that on our own, which is really hard.

Speaker 3 And I think we both realized like we could use some support, but it's hard even when you want to help each other out when one friend is like 40 minutes away or 30 minutes away it's like and you have kids they might as well be on the other side of the planet we would always say even when we were married like wouldn't it be great if we were next door neighbors or whatever it's like our next houses need to be sized because it's so much easier and the kids at the same school that's a big thing when the kids are at the same school the schedules just sync up so much better yeah so then i think i brought it up to you and it's like well what would you think if we moved in together

Speaker 2 And I was like, see, I'd been thinking the same thing, but I thought you would think I was crazy. So I didn't say anything.

Speaker 3 But then DC prices, we was like.

Speaker 2 We were going to the open houses and seeing what we want. Yes.
And, you know, that would be easier with combining our budgets and going in on it together. Yeah.
How do you all figure out the division?

Speaker 2 of labor like i don't know i think i mean we're both moms yeah so the mentality is it's just who's there and we get it done get it done yeah Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then once we're home together, I guess we play to our strengths.

Speaker 2 Aisha gets home a little earlier with the kids than I do. So she'll start dinner.
Then when I get home, then I can start helping the kids with homework.

Speaker 3 You know, in a situation like this, you do have to kind of go with the flow. It can't be like...

Speaker 3 If you're the type of person who can't have anything out of place, you can't really, this is not going to work. And I mean, with kids, I don't know how that works anyway.

Speaker 3 And then I think because we're not romantically involved, you don't have that like,

Speaker 3 you know, do you love me? Do you respect me? Do you like all of that stuff that comes along with it?

Speaker 2 Or the, and then, and then the traditional gender role. The gender role.
Like, oh, you have to do the cooking and cleaning, and I'll, you know, take out the trash.

Speaker 2 It all gets split and shared.

Speaker 3 Yes. It has to get done.
So we figure out how to get it done without all the emotional stuff tied to it.

Speaker 2 When you first told people about this arrangement, what's the reaction? I positive. I'm like, oh, that's so interesting.
Yeah. A lot of people.

Speaker 3 They could wrap their head around it but they're like that's such a good idea yeah and I think people were like you know a lot of people were like I always wanted to do that with my best friend or whatever I do think like when it was like okay we're gonna buy a house together I think that was a little more like okay are you sure about that because that is a big investment to do together but I mean like you know I've said this before it's like you know if you've you know we've been best friends for like 15 years i think it's more than 15 years actually

Speaker 3 um but it's like if i met a man and i fall in love we you know in two years we could be you know have buying houses having a baby doing all you know everything jointly right and no one would look no one would bat an eye at that right like and you've known this person for two years but because you're romantically together people feel like oh that makes sense and so when i looked at that i was like well whoever i would end up with i wouldn't know them nearly as well as i know jasmine so why would I feel more comfortable doing that with them versus buying a house with someone who I've been through thick and thin with, seen in crises, done all this stuff with.

Speaker 3 Um, and so that's why it made sense to me.

Speaker 2 Have there been any growing pains?

Speaker 3 I think with the kids, with the kids, yeah, with the kids, because they have to get used. They, I mean, they know each other, they've grown up since they were newborn, since they were in utero.

Speaker 3 Yes, they were with each other, but living together is different.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, what was it like telling them? How did they respond when it was like, Okay, we're all gonna be living in a house together?

Speaker 2 Initially, it was all excitement. It's basically sleepover every night.
Yes, yeah. That's the thing when we just,

Speaker 3 I mean, look, they're they fight like cats and dogs, but they fight like brothers and sisters, right? Like, that's they fight like siblings, but then they get over it. They get over it really quickly.

Speaker 2 Even though you have one saying, oh, get out my room, get out of my room.

Speaker 2 I guarantee you, if we go look where they're all out, they're all sitting on the couch together, side by side, trying to make room, all playing together.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's like, or it's like, I don't want to be around any of you as I sit where everyone is. There are lots of rooms in this house.

Speaker 3 house there are lots of places you could go i don't want to be around you

Speaker 3 and it's like yeah so their actions kind of speak louder than their their words on that

Speaker 2 what's it like combining finances with your friend because i feel like money is the thing where you know whether it's romantic family friends money is the thing that can make every relationship stressful what has that been like and what's that like yeah well i think it helps that we are both financially stable on our own.

Speaker 2 We're not like pinching every penny. If I'm watching all the kids, I may order them pizza, order them McDonald's.
I'm not, hey, can you cash at me your kids' part?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I know she'll pick it up the next time when she's getting things for my kids.

Speaker 3 And my thing is always, and I think we have both always been like this our whole friendship. If I eat, you eat.
If I got it,

Speaker 3 you gonna have it. We, that's the way we get down.
And so it's not like, it's not this thing where we're like nickeling and diming each other.

Speaker 3 Annalise, why are you up here?

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 What are you doing?

Speaker 3 We're into doing an interview.

Speaker 2 Okay. All right.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. Close the door.

Speaker 3 Show the door. You got to shut the door.
Shut the door. Shut the door.
And see, this is, see, now this is the real come out.

Speaker 2 I'm curious, what has this experience given you that the quote-unquote traditional living experience

Speaker 2 doesn't? I'd say just kind of building on the friendship and motherhood kind of all together.

Speaker 3 And I also think just like being able to bond in a way that isn't surrounded with like romance, right? Like, cause I love romance. Y'all, look, it's a problem.
I'm like a robe, I'm so

Speaker 2 lover girl.

Speaker 3 It's sad, but that comes with its own set of things, but it can be stressful. And I think like not having that and being able to build a bond that's really based on love and respect and trust.

Speaker 3 I know this is my friend. I know this is my sister.

Speaker 2 I know we good.

Speaker 3 And I know people always talk about chosen family, but then it's really, you know, rubber meets the road when you're like bringing your kids into it, right?

Speaker 2 It's interesting because I think a lot of the time we do think of like romantic relationships, like, oh, we're going to take it to the next level.

Speaker 2 But oh, you can take your friendship to the next level.

Speaker 2 Yes, yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, yeah, that's the thing. You can take your friendship to the next level.

Speaker 3 Like I said, it's a unique unique situation because we didn't think we were both going to be divorced pushing forward. And that was not the point.

Speaker 3 That was not our plan for life. But God said, look, but you still have another life that you can build, right? Like it didn't work out the way you thought it would, but

Speaker 3 it can still work out in a different way.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the plan has changed for a lot of us. But could that mean that we actually have more options? That's next.

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Speaker 2 i'm jq and we're back with explain it to me when you live with your best friend and her kids you can share meals and drop-offs and homework that was a big draw for aisha and Jasmine.

Speaker 2 But it was also a way to afford the kind of space they wanted to live in. The housing market seems to be worse than ever.
I wanted to know why and what other alternatives might be out there.

Speaker 5 So I called up my colleague.

Speaker 4 Hi, I'm Rachel Cohen Booth. I am a senior policy correspondent at Vox.com.

Speaker 2 Rachel covers housing, and she says that there are a lot of things at play when it comes to cost.

Speaker 4 It's really expensive. It's getting even more expensive with tariffs, frankly.
But sort of a quick, dirty overview. Housing prices soared during the pandemic when interest rates were at historic lows.

Speaker 4 Price growth has slowed a lot since then, but the prices aren't actually falling. And that's in large part because mortgage rates have more than doubled.

Speaker 4 They've been at six to seven percent for a while now.

Speaker 4 And so that basically adds up to this kind of freeze in the market where home sales are way down and the people who did buy a house a couple years ago are basically locked in.

Speaker 9 We knew we got a killer deal and that we were super lucky. We definitely could not afford to buy our house now.

Speaker 7 I will not give up this house or the rate at which I got the money.

Speaker 4 And people who haven't bought yet, like me, feel like they may never be able to. So all of that pressure is really pushing people to think differently about housing.

Speaker 2 Okay, Rachel, we are both renters and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 2 I actually just moved into a new place and one of the big reasons I chose it is that the rent is considerably cheaper than where I was. How are other people in our shoes picking where to live?

Speaker 4 So I think the primary thing people are looking for is affordability. They're looking for just a house that fits their budget and that is definitely steering people in various directions.

Speaker 4 But some people are also, you know, don't want to live alone. They want to find community.
They want to find housing in bustling areas with lots of amenities and people around them.

Speaker 4 And so, two models that I've covered that I think are really interesting. One is adult dorm rooms, which is sort of an older idea that's now coming back in this new form.

Speaker 4 And another one I'd refer to as intergenerational home sharing.

Speaker 2 I want to dig more into both of these. Let's talk about adult dorms first.
What is that?

Speaker 4 It sounds funny, but it's a serious idea. and potentially this kind of two birds, one stone situation.
Cities are short, millions of homes. There's this huge housing shortage.

Speaker 11 Aw, man. I'm never going to be able to afford the kind of place I want.

Speaker 4 And at the same time, office buildings are sitting empty after the pandemic, after the ship to remote work.

Speaker 11 At least I don't have to go to the office anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I covered this research from Pew and this architecture from Gensler that tries to tackle both problems at once by turning all these vacant office buildings into adult-style dorm rooms.

Speaker 2 Living in the office?

Speaker 11 I don't know.

Speaker 4 The model is like instead of these full private units where everyone has their own bathroom, each floor would share bathrooms, like on an office building, and you'd have, you know, a bed, a desk, a mini-fridge, but then shared bathrooms and shared kitchens and shared living spaces with the TV.

Speaker 4 And so that makes it a lot cheaper because it could cut construction costs by up to a third.

Speaker 11 Woo! More money for avocado toast. Let's go.

Speaker 4 And so we're seeing this already now in cities. Like the researchers looked at places like Denver and Seattle and Minneapolis as kind of prime candidates.

Speaker 4 And these are places with high rents and high vacancy rates and relatively flexible zoning laws.

Speaker 2 I can hear the potential in this. You know, I think of like me when I just graduated from college.

Speaker 4 Or you're like a retiring, you know, grandmother and you want to downsize and be near your grandkids in the cities or something.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And like it does make sense, but I think there are also some elements

Speaker 2 that probably seem bleak to some people.

Speaker 4 I mean, this isn't like you're going outside to the bathroom. A lot of people don't mind sharing if it could mean hundreds of dollars cheapers of rent a month.
So that's sort of the thinking.

Speaker 4 Everyone will kind of make their own calculations as long as it's not unsafe.

Speaker 2 Okay, got it. I want to know about the other option you mentioned.

Speaker 2 What's intergenerational sharing?

Speaker 4 Right now, these stats kind of blew my mind. About 60% of U.S.
homes have at least one spare bedroom. And among empty nesters, there are roughly 21 million houses with two empty bedrooms or more.

Speaker 4 So it's basically this idea of matching older homeowners who have extra space with younger renters who need affordable housing.

Speaker 4 And it's kind of this way to like unlock these millions of empty bedrooms that are just sitting unused right now across the country.

Speaker 4 So, you know, these empty bedrooms are starting to look a a lot more attractive, both to younger people, but also to older people who could use a little bit of help around their big houses.

Speaker 2 How does it work? Do you just like head to the closest pickleball court and find the nicest person and say, hey, can I live with you?

Speaker 4 There's like a lot of different models that are coming up. Some are sort of state-coordinated models.
Some are private companies. One company I covered is called Nestorly.

Speaker 6 Nestorly, an award-winning service, tackles this issue by connecting high-quality renters to older adults with space in their home.

Speaker 4 They use like an Airbnb situation where a homeowner can make a profile, a younger renter can make a profile, you guys have this like secure video chat over the app to meet each other, and then you have like a lease agreement type thing through their app.

Speaker 6 City by city, Nestorly provides the tools and services needed to unlock this win-win housing solution.

Speaker 4 There is a lot of concern, you know, senior scams are a big thing.

Speaker 4 A lot of people don't necessarily want strangers coming into their home.

Speaker 4 So there needs to be a lot of care in how these lease agreements are set up and like making sure everyone feels comfortable and making sure you feel comfortable being able to end the lease.

Speaker 4 But it's not a traditional sort of arrangement that we're so used to right now.

Speaker 2 It sounds like there are, you know, some interesting new options out there. But I do notice that all of these options involve renting.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's right. Co-living spaces, home sharing, they are different kinds of renting.
And honestly, I think more people are going to be, including me, renting for the indefinite future.

Speaker 4 It's just becoming the new normal, and I think it's something

Speaker 4 that we're going to have to get used to.

Speaker 2 Coming up, what if renting isn't the problem? Why maybe we shouldn't have gotten used to home buying in the first place?

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Speaker 2 We're back. This is Explain It To Me.
I'm JQ.

Speaker 2 There's one more person I wanted to talk to today, and that's Jerusalem Dimsis. She's a Vox alum, and now she's the editor-in-chief at the Argument Magazine.

Speaker 2 And when it comes to how we live, she has a hot take. Very hot, very hot.
Homeownership, overrated. That's my take.
Ooh. Take it or leave it.
Take it or leave it, JQ.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's spicy, especially in America. Explain why you've come to this.
Like, what makes you say that? I mean, I'm a renter, and I love being a renter.

Speaker 2 I love the freedom of renting. I love being able to move when I want to move.

Speaker 2 I love not feeling let when something breaks, that it's on the back of my head constantly, that it's my responsibility to like make sure the roof is okay and make sure the fridge isn't going to break and all these, like there's so much stress associated with owning things.

Speaker 2 And a house is a massive asset. Even if you're like an entry-level home buyer where you have like a $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 house, like that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2 And if it goes wrong, like that's your biggest asset. And for most of your life, you're just paying a lot of money for this asset that at any moment could cause you like 10x the amount of grief.

Speaker 2 And so to me, I think it's not that homeownership is never a good idea for anyone. That's obviously not true.

Speaker 2 There are a lot of people who benefit from it and who enjoy getting to have the freedom of, you know, renovating their home and making it exactly how they want it.

Speaker 2 But I think that we overhype the financial benefits like way too much.

Speaker 2 Can you say more about that? Like, what are the financial benefits that we're told it has? And what are the realities? Yes. So I think there are basically two financial benefits we're told about.

Speaker 2 One is the forced savings mechanism. So if you're going to pay your rent or you're going to pay for shelter in some way, it's either going to to be rent or to a mortgage.

Speaker 2 And so if you're going to be forced to save it into a house where like that value eventually is yours at the end of the day versus you're giving it to a landlord and then you never see it again, like that's one, which is obviously true.

Speaker 2 But the second is that the return on that investment is going to be great. And that's just like not guaranteed at all.

Speaker 2 There's so many things that have to happen for the return on your investment in a house to be worth it. First, you have to be able to hold on to that house through bad times.

Speaker 2 And that's really difficult.

Speaker 2 A lot of people, the Great Recession, Recession, for instance, or when you lose a job, you have a medical emergency, you have to move because your kids have to go to a different school, whatever it is, have to sell their house at a time that's not financially opportune for them.

Speaker 2 So like you're selling at a time when maybe interest rates are really high, so you're giving up a low interest rate, or selling at a lower price, maybe than you bought for it, or you're not even making that much money on top of what you were able to sell for it.

Speaker 2 But secondly, owning a home is often more expensive than renting. I've never told anyone this before.
As a mortgage broker, I actually rent my apartment.

Speaker 10 A lot of people don't recognize the amount of interest that you are accumulating over a 30-year mortgage.

Speaker 10 And that's before you think about property taxes, insurance, needing a new HVAC in the next five years, needing a new roof in the next 10 years.

Speaker 2 And you don't get maintenance costs back. That's just keeping it the same.

Speaker 10 That's just, you throw away your money constantly in home ownership.

Speaker 2 So all that extra money that you could use to be investing in the stock market, investing in other kinds of like, you know, large index funds, that kind of investment is almost guaranteed to be higher than what you're going to get from investing in your house.

Speaker 2 How did we get to this point where it's like, okay,

Speaker 2 you're going to quote unquote build wealth. A house is how you do that.
A house is the way you do that. The history of this is quite psychological and it is quite political.

Speaker 2 The idea that owning a house gives you a bigger stake in your community is a very conservative idea that comes about from the sense that like renters are transient, they're immigrants, they're young, they have no stake in their community.

Speaker 2 If you rent, then you're not gonna, you're gonna treat your community badly. Like you'll like put trash on the ground or you'll be a bad influence.

Speaker 2 And so a very large anti-renter attitude really gets sparked in the United States

Speaker 2 as we see high levels of immigration coming into this country. In the early 1900s is when we're really seeing that come to fruition.

Speaker 2 And then you see an attempt to make everyone have a real stake. The ownership society becomes something people really, really care about.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it becomes psychologically and legally codified in the United States' self-conception of what it means to be a good, upstanding citizen is that you own your house, you have this white picket fence, and you live in a place where the land is yours.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I want to get into that social aspect of it. You know, like you said, part of the mythos of homeownership is that you have a house and therefore you are rooted in the community.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't even think that that's true. Like, I'm a renter and that because I'm a renter, it means I can live in a nicer area than I could otherwise afford.

Speaker 2 I live in a part of Northwest DC that the house that I'm living in, there's just like absolutely no way that my husband and I could afford it if we had to buy that house.

Speaker 2 It's just like absurd to us, like to even imagine that happening. And so what that means is like I'm much closer to my friends.

Speaker 2 I can, he is able to bike very easily to his close friends that live nearby. Like we're able to visit his parents very easily.
I can get to my work really easy.

Speaker 2 A lot of my friends can easily access my house. A lot of people, when they have to buy a house for the first time, sacrifice on location.

Speaker 2 They sacrifice the location close to their family and friends in order to get closer to a house that they can afford at a size that they want, at the place that they want, whatever it is that they're trying to get at.

Speaker 2 And what that means is, like, often eventually, maybe later on in life, you've become very rooted.

Speaker 2 But the act of buying a home usually actually moves you out of the community that you're already living in because that's what happens when you have to change price points.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, intellectually, I really get your case, but I think emotionally it's hard for some people to let go of that dream of owning.

Speaker 2 And I think for most Americans, buying a home is a big part of what it means to be an adult and have made it.

Speaker 2 I guess beyond that financial investment, what do you think is going on there? Why is home ownership so wrapped up in our identities as Americans?

Speaker 2 To me, I think that home ownership was always a proxy for freedom.

Speaker 2 So similarly to car ownership and like being able to drive on the open road, these things are quintessentially American in a good way.

Speaker 2 Of like, you want freedom, you want freedom from a boss, you know, the ability to move around at will. Like, all these things are really, really great.

Speaker 2 And, like, I have felt like how do you achieve that in a way that does not lock people into like financially risky assets is monetary. Like, people need economic freedom.

Speaker 2 They need access to good jobs that pay well. They need access to a government that's going to hold people accountable if they exploit tenants or workers.

Speaker 2 So, to me, the American dream is always freedom. We've just always pushed this through home ownership.
And my rejoinder to that is that I don't think homeownership is freedom for everyone.

Speaker 2 I don't feel free at the idea of owning an asset that's that risky. Like, I know people who are underwater on their mortgages right now, and it's just like, is that freedom?

Speaker 2 Like, no, economic freedom is freedom. And so, how we get there is a matter of policy and is a matter of technocratic debate.

Speaker 2 But I think we should reorient ourselves towards that rather than ownership in particular.

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Speaker 12 Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab.

Speaker 12 At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices.
You can invest and trade on your own.

Speaker 12 Plus, get advice in more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab.

Speaker 9 Visit schwab.com to learn more.

Speaker 8 Mercury knows that to an entrepreneur, every financial move means more. An international wire means working with the best contractors on any continent.

Speaker 8 A credit card on day one means creating an ad campaign on day two. And a business loan means loading up on inventory for Black Friday.

Speaker 8 That's why Mercury offers banking that does more, all in one place, so that doing just about anything with your money feels effortless. Visit Mercury.com to learn more.

Speaker 8 Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group Column NA and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.