Today, Explained - The case for renting forever

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Housing prices aren't coming down, and that's challenging us to redefine the American dream. Maybe renting isn't so bad? This story was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. The episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Kelli Wessinger, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Image of homes in Hercules, California by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images.  If you have a question, give us a call on 1-800-618-8545 or send us a note here. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi. The other day, my producer, Kelly and I went to a quiet residential neighborhood in D.C. to visit NPR host, Aisha Rosco. Yes, so I just picked them up from school. 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.

I can be a little skeptical of the American dream, but honestly, when I look at Aisha, she's living it. She has a great job, an active social life, and she lives in her own home that's full of family. people she cares about and that care for her. And the key to it all, her best friend. No, she lost it, yeah, before I care. 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 7 to 12. And they all live under the same roof. We just come in, I make the food. I'm Junklin Hill. Hill. And this week on Explaned to Me from Vox, we're rethinking the way we live. So you may have noticed that the housing market still sucks. 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. 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. They decided to buy that house together. We were both going through this transition in our lives. Like, we had both gotten divorced. We're dealing, you know, trying to get our kids together and do all of that on our own, which is really hard. 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 beside each other. 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 sink 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? And I was like, see, I'd been thinking the same thing, but I thought you would think I was crazy. So I was saying, But then D.C. prices, we was like, 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 of labor? Like, I don't know. I mean, we're both moms. So the mentality is it's just who's there and we get it done. Yeah. And then once we're home together, I guess we play to our strengths.

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 You know in a situation like this You do have to kind of go with the flow It can't be like 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 And then I think because we're not romantically involved You don't have that like You know do you love me Do you respect me

do you like all of that stuff that comes along with it or the and then and then the traditional gender roles like oh you have to do the cooking and cleaning and I'll you know take out the trash and it all gets split and shared yeah it has to get done so we figure out how to get it done without all the emotional stuff tied to it when you first told people about this arrangement what's the reaction I think positive like oh that's so interesting yeah a lot of people wrap their head around it but they're like that's such a good idea yeah and 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 going to 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.

But it's like if I met a man and I fall in love, we, you know, in two years we could be. buying houses having a baby doing 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. And so that's why it made sense to me.

Have there been any growing pains? I think with the kids. Yeah, with the kids. Because they have to get used. I mean, they know each other. They've grown up since they were newborns. Since they were in utero. They were with each other.

But living together is different. Yeah. Yeah. What was it like telling them how did they respond when it was like, okay, we're all going to be living in a house together? Initially, it was all excitement. It is basically sleepover every night. Yes, yeah.

Because that's the thing when we just... I mean, look, they fight like cats and dogs. But they fight like brothers and sisters, right? Like, they fight like siblings. But then they get over it really quickly. No, you have one saying, oh, get out my room, get on my room. 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.

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. There are lots of places you could go. I don't want to be around you. It's like, yeah. So their actions kind of speak louder than their words on that. 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 a thing that can make every relationship stressful. What has that been like? And what's that like? Yeah. Well, I think it helped. that we are both financially stable on our own. We're not like pinching every penny. If I'm watching all the kids

I may order them pizza, order the McDonald's, I'm not, hey, can you cash at me your kids part? Because I know she'll pick it up the next time when she's getting things for my kids. 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,

you're going to have it. That's the way we get down. And so it's not like, it's not this thing where we're like nickel and dime in each other. Annalise, why are you up here? What? What do you do? We're into doing an interview.

Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Close 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. I'm curious, what has this experience given you that the quote unquote, traditional living experience doesn't? I'd say just kind of build. building on the friendship and motherhood kind of all together. And I also think just like being able to bond in a way that isn't surrounded with like romance, right? Like, because I love romance. Y'all know, look, it's a problem.

I'm like a role. I am so romantic. Are you a lover girl? I am a lover girl. It's sad. But that comes with this 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. I know this is my friend. I know this is my sister. I know we good. 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? 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. But oh, you can take your friendships to the next level. Yes. Yeah, like, yeah, that's the thing. You can take your friendship to the next level. And like I said, it's a unique situation because we didn't think we was both going to be divorced pushing forward. And that was not the plan. 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 it can still work out in a different way. Okay. So the plan has changed. of us. But could that mean that we actually have more options? That's next. Support for today explained comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue. Fancy. Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit Sacks is where

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Unlimited projects, unlimited pages, unlimited collaborators, and all those essentials, those vectors, those 3D transforms, those gradients, those wireframes, everything I'm told you need to design. Framer claims, they've built the fastest way to publish websites and are now defining how we design for the web. True all in one design, platform, social assets, campaign visuals, vectors, and icons, all the way to a live site. Ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool. You can start creating for free at framer.com slash design and use code explained. For a free month of Framer.com.com slash design and use promo code explained. Framer.com slash design promo code explained. Rules and restrictions do apply. 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 me. meals and drop-offs and homework. That was a big draw for Aisha and Jasmine. 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. So I called it my colleague. Hi, I'm Rachel Cohen Booth. I am a senior policy correspondent at Vox.com. Rachel covers housing, and she says that there are a lot of things at play when it comes to cost. 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. Price growth has slowed a lot since them, but the prices aren't actually falling. And that's in large part because mortgage rates have more than doubled. They've been at 6 to 7% for a while now. 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. We knew we got a killer deal and that we were super lucky. We definitely could not afford to buy our house now. I will not give up this house or the rate at which I got the money. 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. Okay, Rachel, we are both renters and probably will be for the foreseeable future. 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? 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. 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. 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. And another one I'd refer to as intergenerational home sharing. I want to dig more into both of these. Let's talk about adult dorms first. What is that? 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. Oh, man, I'm never going to be able to afford the kind of place I want. And at the same time, office buildings are sitting empty after the pandemic, after the ship's

to remote work. At least I don't have to go to the office anymore. 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. Living in the office? I don't know. 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. And so that makes it a lot cheaper because it could cut construction costs by up to a third. Woo! More money for avocado toast. Let's go. 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. And these are places with high rents and high vacancy rates and relatively flexible zoning laws. I can hear the potential in this, you know, I think of, like, me when I just graduated from college. Or you're like a retiring, you know, grandmother and you want to downsize and be near your grandkids in the cities or something.

Yeah, and like it does make sense, but I think there are also some elements that probably seem bleak to some people. 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. Everyone will kind of make their own calculations as long as it's not unsafe. Okay, got it. I want to know about the other option you mentioned. What's intergenerational sharing? 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. So it's basically this idea of matching older homeowners who

have extra space with younger renters who need affordable housing. And it's kind of this way to unlock these millions of empty bedrooms that are just sitting unused right now across the country. So, you know, these empty bedrooms are starting to look 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. 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? There's like a lot of different models that are coming up. Some are sort of state-coordinated model.

Some are private companies. One company I covered is called Nestorley. Nestorly, an award-winning service tackles this issue by connecting high-quality renters to older adults with space in their home. 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.

City by city, Nestle provides the tools and services needed to unlock this win-win housing solution. There is a lot of concern. You know, senior scams are a big thing. A lot of people don't necessarily want strangers coming into their home. So there needs to be a lot of care in how these lease agreements are set up and making sure everyone feels comfortable and making sure you feel comfortable being able to end the lease.

But it's not a traditional sort of arrangement that we, that we're so used to right now. It sounds like there are, you know, some interesting new options out there, but I do notice that all of these options involve renting. 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. It's just becoming the new normal. And I think it's something that we're going to have to get used to. Coming up, what if renting isn't the problem?

Why maybe we shouldn't have gotten used to home buying in the first place. As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round, or your first big enterprise deal. But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, security expectations are also coming in. faster, and those expectations are higher than ever. Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth, or stall it if you wait too long. Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate security and compliance across more than 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO-27-001, HIPAA, and more. With deep integrations and automated workforce built for fast-moving teams, VANTA gets you audit-ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models,

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That's V-A-N-T-A.com slash Vox to save $1,000 for a limited time. We're back. This is Explained it to me. I'm J-Q. There's one more person I wanted to talk to today. And that's Jerusalem Dimcis. She's a Voxalum, and now she's the editor-in-chief at the argument magazine. And when it comes to how we live, she has a hot take. Very hot, very hot. Homeotorship, overrated. That's my take. Take it or leave it. Take it or leave it, JQ. 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. I love them. I love them. freedom of renting. I love being able to move when I want to move. 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. And a house is a massive asset. Even if you're like entry level home buyer where you have like a $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 house, like that's a lot of money. 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. And so to me, I think it's not that homeownership is never a good idea for anyone. That's obviously not true.

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. But I think that we overhyped the financial benefits, like way too much. 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. 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 be rent or to a mortgage. And so if you're going to be forced to save it into a house where, like, that value eventually is yours 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. But the second is that the return on that investment is going to be great. And that's just like not guaranteed at all. there's so many things that have to happen for the return your investment in a house to be worth it. First, you have to be able to hold on to that house through bad times. And that's really difficult. A lot of people, the Great 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. 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. 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.

A lot of people don't recognize the amount of interest that you are accumulating over a 30-year mortgage. And that's before you think about property taxes, insurance, needing a new H-Back in the next five years, needing a new roof in the next 10 years. And you don't get maintenance costs back. That's just keeping it the same. You throw away your money constantly in homeownership. 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. How did we get to this point where it's like, okay, 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. 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. If you rent, then you're not going to, you're going to treat your community badly. Like you'll, you'll, like, put trash on the ground or you'll be a bad influence. And so a very large anti-renter attitude really gets sparked in the United States.

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

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. Like, I don't even think that that's true. Like, I'm a renter. And because I'm a renter, it means I can live in a nicer area than I could otherwise afford. I live in a part of Northwest D.C. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. And what that means is like often eventually, maybe later on in life, you've become very rooted. 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. 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. 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.

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? To me, I think that home ownership was always a proxy for freedom. So similarly to car ownership and being able to drive on the open road, these things are quintessentially American in a good way of like, you want freedom. You want freedom from a boss, you know, the ability to move around. around at will. Like, all these things are really, really great. 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. 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. So to me, the American dream is always freedom. We just have always pushed this through homeownership. And my rejoinder to that is that I don't think home ownership is freedom for everyone. I don't feel free at the idea of owning an asset that that's that risky. Like, I know people who are underwater on their mortgages right now, and it's just like, is that freedom? Like, no. Economic freedom is freedom. And so how we get there as a matter of policy and as a matter of technocratic debate, but I think we should reorient ourselves towards that rather than ownership in particular.

Is there a question you have about the world we live in, something you want to explain? On this show, we've explained things like why dating is so hard now and how to pick your insurance and what's up with all those scammy texts. What do you want to know more about? Give us a call. 1-800-6-1845 or you can email us at AskVox.com. We can't do it without. out you. Another way to help the show? Become a Vox member. When you do, you support our work

and you also get a ton of cool perks. Like listening to this podcast with no ads. To learn more and to get a cute little discount, head over to vox.com slash members. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Kelly Wessinger. It was edited by Jenny Lawton and fact checked by Melissa Hersh. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and it was engineered by Adrienne Lilly. This story was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. I'm your host, John Glyn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye! Mercury knows that to an entrepreneur, every financial move means more.

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