New Houses Were 770 Square Feet. Now They Are 2,600.

Rent takes a bigger bite than it used to, and the yardstick got bigger too.

Emma Camp, 27, who writes and makes short videos for the opinion pages of a national newspaper, says housing costs more even when you compare similar homes. The reason, she says, is that America has not built enough houses.

Ben Sasse adds a second pressure. He compares new homes then and now, a median new start of 770 square feet with modest materials 45 years ago against about 2,600 square feet with high quality materials today. Camp agrees and reaches further back, noting that in 1950 a shockingly high share of American homes lacked complete plumbing.

That forgotten history feeds what Camp calls lifestyle inflation. Many upper middle class young adults grew up with the space, comfort, and savings of two middle aged parents at peak earnings, and then expect to keep that standard on day one. Camp argues the normal pattern runs the other way. Moving out is supposed to mean a step down, into roommates and a shabby first apartment, because parents have decades of income and savings and a young worker does not.

Camp ties that view to her own start. She said, “I was born when my mom was a 21-year-old college student, and my dad worked at a catering company.” She says she wanted for nothing, with toys, love, and birthday cake, but the family was not rich.

Soon after college, talking with her then fiance, now husband, when both were 23, she said a child born to them then would have had far more financial resources than her parents had when she was born. Camp said that "living in my 700 square foot Brooklyn apartment with my husband," the idea that they would not be financially ready for children "strikes me as absolutely crazy." Because of what her parents managed on, her bar for feeling successful is lower than that of many friends.