Living these days is expensive.
It doesn’t matter your politics, we can all agree that the cost of living — from groceries to housing to gas, child care, insurance, health care and everyday necessities — has gotten to the point that many Americans are having to do more than just pinch pennies. Americans are taking second and even third jobs to make ends meet, and cutting out many things altogether, like going out to eat and cutting back on the things we buy at the grocery store, skipping vacations and even forgoing medical visits due to costs.
Affordability is a real issue, whether some lawmakers in this country want to admit that or not.
Those who live in Northern Michigan know this all too well. Just take Petoskey, for instance. The median household income in Petoskey is $71,783, according to the Economic Research Institute, which has compiled salary, cost-of-living, along with various survey and market data for the last 35 years. Meanwhile, the institute notes that the median house price in Petoskey is just over $319,000. If $71,000 is middle ground when it comes to household income in Petoskey, how is buying a $319,000 home possible?
Of course we all know Emmet County in general can have skewed numbers thanks to the massive amount of vacation properties in the area. Yes, people who own these vacation properties pay a good chunk of taxes that go to help everything from schools to roads, but they sure aren’t making life easier for most year-round residents who are struggling to get by.
If you’re looking to rent, good luck! The average cost of an apartment in Petoskey is $1,414 a month, according to apartments.com. For years I’ve listened to local leaders talk about getting younger people to move to the area, but I know darn well from many friends and contacts in the community that gettin g young professionals to come to Petoskey and the surrounding area for work is a challenge in large part due to not only housing costs but the lack of housing in of itself, let alone lower wages. That saying, “The view of the bay is half the pay” rings true for many of us.
So what are recent graduates and young adults to do? Turns out, many of them are looking to mom and dad.
In 2026, more young adults are living with their parents than at any time since the 1940’s. While shacking up with the parents was perhaps once frowned upon, it is now not only being done out of necessity in many cases, but is being seen as a shift in American culture.
In fact, about 18 percent of young adults aged 25-34 currently live with their parents, according to the Pew Research Center, and men are more likely to live with their parents than women. And guess what? High rent prices and low housing affordability are the main drivers of this trend.
And before you come for them and call young adults lazy, you need to know that the kids these days don’t have it easy. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Study notes wages in the United States have gone up, but not nearly as much as housing costs. For example, in 1985, the median annual household income was $23,620 and the median home price was $82,800. Fast forward to 2025 and median income is at $83,000 while the housing median is at $415,000. That means wages jumped 252 percent while housing jumped 403 percent.
The numbers just can’t keep up. It doesn’t matter if you have a college degree, work in the trades or are an hourly worker at a nearby business — a large number of young people are struggling no matter what field they are in.
So what’s the answer? Beats me. I don’t think anyone really knows because if they did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation over and over and over again for years.
The reality is that there is an affordability crisis in Northern Michigan and throughout the rest of the United States. And there’s a whole lot of recent graduates out there who are starting new careers and looking for jobs and for many of them, finding a place to live — if they can actually find one they can afford — may very well be their first big obstacle.
So if you find out a young adult you know is moving back in with mom and dad, let’s try to understand their reality, because we all know living these days is expensive. And young adults today have a very different reality than many of us did when we were just starting out.
Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: More young adults live with their parents. Don’t judge them | Opinion
Reporting by Rachel Brougham, Community Columnist / The Petoskey News-Review
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