Is the Housing Affordability Crisis Becoming a Generational Wealth Fight?

Jasmyn Carter thought she had done what prospective homebuyers are supposed to do.She had a good debt-to-income ratio, she paid her student loans, and by 2022, she had saved $30,000 in cash toward a home.Then she started home shopping.Carter, whose family has lived in Texas for eight generations, told Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico at an Oct. 14 CNN town hall that when she went house hunting, a family from California put an additional $80,000 down in cash.“We cannot afford a house,” she told him.Talarico said he was hearing the same frustration from young Texans who had been promised that working hard, going to school, and playing by the rules would deliver the American dream.“That was a lie,” he said.Carter countered: “It’s a nightmare.”With the Nov. 3 midterms just days away, new polling suggests that frustration is rippling across how young Americans see their economic future.The Harvard Youth Poll reported on Oct. 22 that, for the first time in its history, Americans aged 18 to 29 are more likely to expect to be financially worse off than their parents—27% to 25%. Two years ago, optimism led pessimism by 8 percentage points.One generation's housing wealth is another...