Jasmine Delgado flips through an old family photo album at the dining room table of her childhood home.
One snapshot from the 1960s shows Delgado’s dad posing near the Venice Beach Boardwalk, not far from where she grew up along the border of Culver City and L.A. Another photo captures farm workers on strike in the 1930s. Her grandfather picked celery back when much of the state’s crop was grown in Venice.
Now, Delgado worries she and her infant son Theo may have to sever family roots going back more than a century.
“It breaks my heart,” said Delgado, 31. “I'm a Westside girl, through and through. I was born and raised here. My dad was born and raised here... I just don't know if Theo is going to be able to be raised here.”
Across Los Angeles, millennial parents are being driven to the same conclusion. The region’s severe lack of affordable family-sized housing has families moving out of state or deciding to delay having kids, leading to declining school enrollment and broken family ties.
Family-sized apartments in L.A. cost $4,000 to rent
The math is startling. In the mid-1990s, close to 4 in 10 local households could afford a median-priced home in L.A. County, according to the California Association of Realtors.
With the current median home price reaching $817,100, only about 11% of local households can afford to buy today.
It’s not just homeownership that's getting further out of reach. Even renting an apartment with enough space for kids is increasingly inaccessible to millennial parents.
The city of L.A.’s most recent housing planning document estimates that a three-bedroom unit rents for about $3,995 per month, making family-sized apartments unaffordable to households earning less than $159,800 per year.
L.A. County’s median household income is about $83,000.
The region’s shortage of family-sized housing affordable to young parents has spurred lawmakers to consider new policies aimed at building cheaper apartments with more bedrooms.
On another front, some older Angelenos — who are far more likely than millennial parents to own large houses in L.A. — are beginning to construct additional housing units on their properties as a way to make space for young families.
But it could take years for such efforts to ease pent-up demand. Until then, millennials with kids will have to scramble to find space for their families.
Housing kids ‘seems impossible in L.A.’
After graduating from UCLA, Delgado rented housing with a friend. Later on, she moved into a small one-bedroom Brentwood apartment with her partner. She worked on Erin Darling’s unsuccessful 2022 campaign to represent L.A. city council district 11.
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Millennial parents are struggling to buy family-sized homes in Los Angeles. Many can't even afford to rent an apartment with space for kids. This LAist series dives into the housing crisis for young families, what lawmakers plan to do about it, and how some baby boomers are already starting to help.
After becoming pregnant, Delgado said it was clear that she couldn’t afford an apartment large enough for children. So she decided to return to her parents’ home to care for her baby full-time.
“I have a lot of help from my family, which is part of why I moved back in,” Delgado said. Eventually, she wants to go back to work and find a place she and her partner can call their own.
“This isn't a permanent thing,” she said. “I don't want to be a stay-at-home mom forever. And I'm scared that the price of both housing and childcare is just going up.”
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Over the last 50 years, U.S. residents living in multigenerational homes has been steadily increasing, according to analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center.
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While financial pressures and caregiving are the top reasons cited for such arrangements, a substantial percentage of people — 28% — said their families had always lived multigenerationally.
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As for how it was working out, unsurprisingly people expressed upsides and downsides saying it was:
- Convenient (58%)
- Rewarding (54%)
- Stressful (23%)
Her partner has floated the idea of relocating to Wyoming, where they could afford to buy a house.
Delgado admits the idea makes financial sense. But she’s not sure she’s ready for such a big move.
“I want a house for us, or even just a space of our own — it doesn't have to be a house,” Delgado said. “But it seems impossible in Los Angeles. That reminds me of how communities start to fracture, when people have to move far away from the places where they have roots, families, friends, jobs, memories.”
The elusive hunt for an affordable 3 BDRM
Despite the cost and lack of space, many L.A. families are making apartment life work.
Brianna Mercado, 35, recently moved into a two-bedroom Eagle Rock apartment with her husband, 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. They previously rented a house in Monrovia.
“The biggest difference is just feeling like there's not so much outdoor space for the kids,” Mercado said. There are also times when different family members are on different wavelengths.
“When I'm tired, but the kids are bouncy, it can be difficult,” she said. “Or if my husband is wanting to cook up a storm, but I'm wanting to chill.”
Mercado is glad the apartment is close to her husband’s job as a humanities teacher in a private school her kids now attend (with a tuition break). And she’s happy they found an affordable place after an eye-opening search.
“I was very naive in what I thought would be available to us,” Mercado said. “There just weren't really three-bedroom homes that were within our price range.”
For now, Mercado said her family has no plans to buy a home in Los Angeles. The prices, she said, are “outrageous.”
Buying a home would mean “leaving L.A. or getting really creative and figuring out how to do it with other people,” Mercado said, keeping her mind open to co-buying property with friends. “Those seem like the only two options.”
L.A. school enrollment is plummeting
A 2023 survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that half (51%) of Californians aged 18 to 34 had considered moving to a cheaper area or leaving the state entirely due to housing costs. Younger Californians were more likely to view moving as a potential solution to unaffordable housing than respondents over 55.
Millennials aren’t just daydreaming about leaving L.A. Many are doing it. The county’s population fell by more than 90,000 between July 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022, driven in large part by families flocking to regions with more affordable housing.
Similar trends show up in public school enrollment. The number of students in K-12 schools has fallen by 15% across greater L.A. over the last decade, the steepest decline in all of California. The California Department of Finance projects L.A. enrollment will fall another 19% by 2032.
Julien Lafortune, a research fellow specializing in education at the Public Policy Institute of California, said economists have linked soaring home prices with declining birth rates among couples who rent. So it’s no surprise to see fewer kids showing up in L.A. schools.
“We take time to work longer and build up income to then save for and buy a house,” Lafortune said. “But if you start having children later, statistically you have fewer children.”
The Inglewood Unified School District announced plans last week to permanently close five schools. The district’s enrollment has fallen from 18,000 in 2002 to less than 7,000 today.
Young families also need home offices, in-law units
For families choosing to stay, squeezing into small apartments is common. About 270,000 households in the city of L.A. meet the federal government’s definition of overcrowding. At 17%, L.A. has one of the nation's highest rental overcrowding rates.
With room for kids at a premium, some L.A. couples are opting to delay having children. In an economy transformed by remote work, many young parents also need home office space. Some have to care for their aging parents too.
Don Fisco, 36, works from home as a film and TV editor. His job requires a dedicated editing suite that currently takes up one of his apartment’s two bedrooms. His wife often does her marketing job out of their apartment as well.
“We're now at the point where we are soon to outgrow it, because we're hoping to expand and start a family,” Fisco said. He also wants his widowed father to join them from New Jersey after he retires from a career in the U.S. Post Office that began during the Carter Administration.
“We don't really want him to be there by himself,” Fisco said. “Not only are we trying to find a place that will be able to accommodate a work-from-home situation for not one but two people, have a space for a kid, but also for my retired father… Even with two incomes, I just can't see how you're able to do it.”
Fisco said public perception of millennials seems stuck on worn-out tropes about how slow they are to hit adult milestones like buying homes and having kids.
He said that’s not by choice.
“Millennials are in their 30s and 40s — they're not goofing off and partying,” Fisco said. “We want the ability to be lame and settle down. And we just have structural problems that are preventing us from doing that.”
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How to have a voice on housing affordability
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For people who live in L.A., the Board of Supervisors and City Council have the most direct impact on housing affordability in your neighborhood.
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The best way to keep tabs on your own local government is by attending public meetings for your city council or local boards. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Find meeting schedules and agendas: City councils usually meet at least twice a month, although larger ones may meet weekly. Committees and boards tend to meet less often, typically once a month. You can find the schedule and meeting agenda on your local government’s website, or posted physically at your local city hall. Find more tips here.
Learn the jargon: Closed session, consent calendars and more! We have definitions for commonly used terms here.
How to give public comment: Every public meeting allows community members to give comment, whether or not it’s about something on the agenda. The meeting agenda will have specific instructions for giving public comment. Review more details here.
