Locked Out: Debt, Housing, and the Delay of Adulthood
In the first two pieces, we talked about the broken deal around work:
The ladder lost its bottom rungs.
The job got unbundled.
We shifted risk from companies to 20-somethings and told them to be grateful for “flexibility.”
Now let’s talk about where all of that lands:
In their living rooms.
In their parents’ spare bedrooms.
And in the neighborhoods where they can’t afford to buy a house.
Because this isn’t just an “income” problem. It’s a balance sheet problem. It’s about debt, rent, and the math of becoming an adult in a system that quietly changed the rules.
The Price of the Ticket vs. the Value of the Prize
For my generation, college was a step up.
Tuition hurt, but it was manageable.
You borrowed some money, got a job, and paid it down.
The degree actually moved you into a higher-earning lane.
Today?
We’ve turned higher education into a very expensive ticket to a very crowded show. The door might be locked when you get there, and no one refunds the ticket.
Here’s what that looks like on the ground:
Bachelor’s grads with $30k–$40k in student loans.
Master’s grads—often in lower-paid “helping” professions—sitting on $60k–$80k+ in debt.
Starting salaries that don’t remotely match those numbers.
That debt sits on top of everything else:
It inflates their monthly expenses.
It wrecks their debt-to-income ratios.
It follows them into every major life decision: marriage, kids, house, business.
In the 90s, student loans were a phase.
Now they feel like a lifestyle.
When Debt Becomes an Anchor, Not a Bridge
We like to talk about debt as a “tool.” And when it’s priced fairly and tied to real opportunity, it can be.
But for a lot of young adults, especially women who followed the advice to stack degrees in low-paying fields, student debt doesn’t feel like a tool. It feels like an anchor.
Think about the sequence:
You’re told you need a degree to be employable.
You’re told a Master’s will really set you apart.
You borrow heavily to get them both.
You graduate into:
An underpowered job market,
With unbundled benefits,
And a housing market that took off without you.
You’re not crazy if that feels like a bait-and-switch.
You kept your end of the bargain. The system didn’t keep its end of the math.
“I Could Afford the Payment. The Bank Doesn’t Care.”
This is the part older generations often miss: housing isn’t just about whether you can scrape together a down payment. It’s about whether your income and debt profile fit the boxes that lenders and underwriters built for a world that no longer exists.
In the old model:
You had a W-2 job with a predictable paycheck.
Your student loans were smaller.
Your debt-to-income ratio looked clean.
A bank could look at a couple pay stubs and say, “Sure, you’re good.”
Now:
If you’re a gig worker, contractor, or bouncing between short-term roles, your income is “unstable” on paper—even if you’re hustling constantly.
Lenders often count a phantom payment for your student loans, even if they’re in deferment.
Any effort you make to lower your tax bill as a self-employed person (legitimate write-offs) comes back to bite you when the bank looks at your net income and says, “Too low.”
The result is surreal:
You can pay $1,800 a month in rent without missing,
But you “can’t afford” a $1,500 mortgage because your DTI and tax returns don’t check the right boxes.
It’s not that you’re a bad bet.
It’s that the rules were written for a different game.
The Rent Trap: Paying Forever, Owning Never
Now layer in the reality of the rental market.
If you’re under 30 in a place like Clark County, you’re living in a region where:
Housing prices were driven up by people moving out of Portland.
Wages for entry-level and mid-level local jobs didn’t keep up.
And rents rose to chase those inflated home values.
So you end up with this trap:
You rent because you can’t qualify to buy.
Your rent is so high you can’t save.
Every year you stay in that cycle, the down payment you need moves a little farther away.
Meanwhile, in coastal and rural counties—Pacific, Wahkiakum, Skamania, parts of Lewis—you face a different version of the same problem:
Cash buyers from Seattle and Portland show up and buy “starter homes” as second homes or Airbnbs.
Inventory disappears.
Prices climb out of reach for the very people who live and work there.
If you’re 26, working in hospitality, fisheries, health care, or the trades in those places, you’re not choosing to rent forever because it’s glamorous. You’re renting because every time a house hits the market, someone with more capital and less connection gets there first.
The Boomerang Generation: Rational, Not Weak
Here’s where all of this lands socially.
We have more 20- and early-30-somethings living with their parents than we’ve seen in generations. Commentators call it “failure to launch,” as if it’s a motivational issue.
Look at it another way:
If you’re carrying student debt, working in an unbundled job, paying high rent, and getting hit by rising everything… moving home can be the one rational move left on the board.
It can be:
A way to pay down debt faster.
A way to save for a real down payment.
A way to survive the volatility of gig-ified work.
The shame we wrap around that decision is misplaced. It’s not a lack of ambition. It’s a reaction to a set of constraints we built—and that we keep pretending are normal.
The Emotional Toll: Not Just Money, But Time
Money is the obvious piece. The less obvious piece is time.
When you stretch the path from:
“graduate → job → home → family”
into:
“graduate → debt → gig work → maybe grad school → more debt → unstable work → maybe a home in your mid- to late-30s if everything goes right”
you’re not just changing the balance sheet. You’re changing the entire rhythm of a life:
People delay marriage because they don’t feel secure.
They delay kids because they don’t see how to afford them.
They delay buying homes, which delays building equity, which delays everything that used to follow.
You end up with a generation that doesn’t just feel broke. They feel behind—like they showed up late to a race someone else already finished.
Prosperity-Works: Turning Income into Borrowability
So where does Prosperity-Works fit into this?
If Blog 1 was about rebuilding the ladder
and Blog 2 was about rebundling the job,
Blog 3 is about turning that into something a bank will respect.
Prosperity-Works, at its core, is a way to:
Give workers a stable W-2 identity, even as they move between multiple local employers.
Provide continuous benefits and employment history, instead of a patchwork of contracts and gaps.
Create a consistent, documentable income stream that underwriters and local lenders can actually work with.
That does three crucial things:
Improves DTI profiles over time
A predictable paycheck with real benefits makes it easier to manage and pay down student debt, which slowly cleans up that debt-to-income ratio. It’s not magic. It’s structure.Makes income “real” in the eyes of banks
If you’re bouncing between contract gigs, your income looks volatile—even if you’re working like crazy.
If you’re a Prosperity-Works employee deployed across different businesses, your income looks stable. You’re not explaining 1099s to an underwriter; you’re handing over W-2s.Creates a recognizable “stamp” for local lenders
Over time, we can work directly with community banks and credit unions in Southwest Washington so that when they see “Prosperity-Works employee,” they know:What that benefits package looks like.
What the typical turnover and income patterns are.
Why that borrower is a better bet than their credit score alone might suggest.
We can’t fix student loans or housing policy overnight. But we can change the one thing that sits underneath all of it: the quality and stability of the job itself.
This Isn’t About Handouts. It’s About Infrastructure.
Some people will read this and say, “So you want government to fix all this?” No. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying:
We broke the path to adulthood by accident, through a thousand small decisions that all pushed risk downward.
We’re watching a generation spin its wheels in place.
And we have enough local intelligence, capital, and courage to build a different on-ramp ourselves.
Prosperity-Works is not a program. It’s infrastructure:
For workers, it’s a bridge from hustle to stability.
For employers, it’s a way to compete for talent and share costs without getting buried in HR complexity.
For lenders and communities, it’s a way to turn “hard-working but stuck” into “qualified and ready.”
In the next piece, I’m going to zoom in even tighter on Southwest Washington—
and talk about what this model could actually mean for a 24-year-old in Longview, a 26-year-old in Ilwaco, or a 29-year-old teacher in Vancouver who wants to stop renting and start rooting.
Because if we want young people in places like Pacific, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania, and Clark to build lives here—not just pass through on their way to somewhere “more affordable”—
we’re going to have to stop blaming them for the math and start changing the structure that feeds it.
Gemini Edited Version:
ocked Out: Debt, Housing, and the Delay of Adulthood
In the first two pieces, we talked about the broken deal around work: The ladder lost its bottom rungs. The job got unbundled. We shifted risk from companies to 20-somethings and told them to be grateful for “flexibility.”
Now let’s talk about where all of that lands: In their living rooms. In their parents’ spare bedrooms. And in the neighborhoods where they can’t afford to buy a house. Because this isn’t just an “income” problem. It’s a balance sheet problem. It’s about debt, rent, and the math of becoming an adult in a system that quietly changed the rules.
The Price of the Ticket vs. the Value of the Prize
For my generation, college was a step up. Tuition hurt, but it was manageable. You borrowed some money, got a job, and paid it down. The degree actually moved you into a higher-earning lane.
Today? We’ve turned higher education into a very expensive ticket to a very crowded show. The door might be locked when you get there, and no one refunds the ticket. Tuition costs have outpaced inflation by roughly 170% since 1990. Here’s what that looks like on the ground:
Bachelor’s grads with $30k–$40k in student loans.
Master’s grads—often in lower-paid “helping” professions—sitting on $60k–$80k+ in debt.
Starting salaries that don’t remotely match those numbers.
That debt sits on top of everything else: It inflates their monthly expenses. It wrecks their debt-to-income ratios. It follows them into every major life decision: marriage, kids, house, business. In the 90s, student loans were a phase. Now they feel like a lifestyle.
When Debt Becomes an Anchor, Not a Bridge
We like to talk about debt as a “tool.” And when it’s priced fairly and tied to real opportunity, it can be. But for a lot of young adults, especially women who followed the advice to stack degrees in low-paying fields, student debt doesn’t feel like a tool. It feels like an anchor. (Data shows nearly 40% of Master's degrees now have a negative ROI—meaning you lose money over your lifetime by getting them).
Think about the sequence: You’re told you need a degree to be employable. You’re told a Master’s will really set you apart. You borrow heavily to get them both. You graduate into:
An underpowered job market,
With unbundled benefits,
And a housing market that took off without you.
You’re not crazy if that feels like a bait-and-switch. You kept your end of the bargain. The system didn’t keep its end of the math.
“I Could Afford the Payment. The Bank Doesn’t Care.”
This is the part older generations often miss: housing isn’t just about whether you can scrape together a down payment. It’s about whether your income and debt profile fit the boxes that lenders and underwriters built for a world that no longer exists.
In the old model: You had a W-2 job with a predictable paycheck. Your student loans were smaller. Your debt-to-income ratio looked clean. A bank could look at a couple pay stubs and say, “Sure, you’re good.”
Now:
If you’re a gig worker, contractor, or bouncing between short-term roles, your income is “unstable” on paper—even if you’re hustling constantly. Banks often demand 2 years of rising tax returns to count that income.
Lenders often count a "phantom payment" for your student loans, even if they’re in deferment. (Usually 0.5% to 1% of the total balance).
Any effort you make to lower your tax bill as a self-employed person (legitimate write-offs) comes back to bite you when the bank looks at your net income and says, “Too low.”
The result is surreal: You can pay $1,800 a month in rent without missing, But you “can’t afford” a $1,500 mortgage because your DTI and tax returns don’t check the right boxes. A $50k student loan balance can knock $40,000–$70,000 off your home-buying power. It’s not that you’re a bad bet. It’s that the rules were written for a different game.
The Rent Trap: Paying Forever, Owning Never
Now layer in the reality of the rental market. If you’re under 30 in a place like Clark County, you’re living in a region where:
Housing prices were driven up by people moving out of Portland.
Wages for entry-level and mid-level local jobs didn’t keep up.
And rents rose to chase those inflated home values.
So you end up with this trap: You rent because you can’t qualify to buy. Your rent is so high you can’t save. Every year you stay in that cycle, the down payment you need moves a little farther away. (In 1995, a home cost ~3x the median income. Today, it’s 5x to 7x).
Meanwhile, in coastal and rural counties—Pacific, Wahkiakum, Skamania, parts of Lewis—you face a different version of the same problem:
Cash buyers from Seattle and Portland show up and buy “starter homes” as second homes or Airbnbs.
Inventory disappears.
Prices climb out of reach for the very people who live and work there.
If you’re 26, working in hospitality, fisheries, health care, or the trades in those places, you’re not choosing to rent forever because it’s glamorous. You’re renting because every time a house hits the market, someone with more capital and less connection gets there first.
The Boomerang Generation: Rational, Not Weak
Here’s where all of this lands socially. We have more 20- and early-30-somethings living with their parents than we’ve seen in generations. Roughly 50% of adults aged 18–29 are living at home—a rate not seen since the Great Depression. Commentators call it “failure to launch,” as if it’s a motivational issue. Look at it another way: If you’re carrying student debt, working in an unbundled job, paying high rent, and getting hit by rising everything… moving home can be the one rational move left on the board. It can be:
A way to pay down debt faster.
A way to save for a real down payment.
A way to survive the volatility of gig-ified work. The shame we wrap around that decision is misplaced. It’s not a lack of ambition. It’s a reaction to a set of constraints we built—and that we keep pretending are normal.
The Emotional Toll: Not Just Money, But Time
Money is the obvious piece. The less obvious piece is time. When you stretch the path from: “graduate → job → home → family” into: “graduate → debt → gig work → maybe grad school → more debt → unstable work → maybe a home in your mid- to late-30s if everything goes right” you’re not just changing the balance sheet. You’re changing the entire rhythm of a life:
People delay marriage because they don’t feel secure. (The median marriage age has jumped nearly 4 years since 1995).
They delay kids because they don’t see how to afford them. (The U.S. birth rate has dropped to ~1.6, well below replacement level).
They delay buying homes, which delays building equity, which delays everything that used to follow.
You end up with a generation that doesn’t just feel broke. They feel behind—like they showed up late to a race someone else already finished.
Prosperity-Works: Turning Income into Borrowability
So where does Prosperity-Works fit into this? If Blog 1 was about rebuilding the ladder and Blog 2 was about rebundling the job, Blog 3 is about turning that into something a bank will respect.
Prosperity-Works, at its core, is a way to:
Give workers a stable W-2 identity, even as they move between multiple local employers.
Provide continuous benefits and employment history, instead of a patchwork of contracts and gaps.
Create a consistent, documentable income stream that underwriters and local lenders can actually work with.
That does three crucial things:
Improves DTI profiles over time A predictable paycheck with real benefits makes it easier to manage and pay down student debt, which slowly cleans up that debt-to-income ratio. It’s not magic. It’s structure.
Makes income “real” in the eyes of banks If you’re bouncing between contract gigs, your income looks volatile—even if you’re working like crazy. If you’re a Prosperity-Works employee deployed across different businesses, your income looks stable. You’re not explaining 1099s to an underwriter; you’re handing over W-2s.
Creates a recognizable “stamp” for local lenders Over time, we can work directly with community banks and credit unions in Southwest Washington so that when they see “Prosperity-Works employee,” they know:
What that benefits package looks like.
What the typical turnover and income patterns are.
Why that borrower is a better bet than their credit score alone might suggest.
We can’t fix student loans or housing policy overnight. But we can change the one thing that sits underneath all of it: the quality and stability of the job itself.
This Isn’t About Handouts. It’s About Infrastructure.
Some people will read this and say, “So you want government to fix all this?” No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying: We broke the path to adulthood by accident, through a thousand small decisions that all pushed risk downward. We’re watching a generation spin its wheels in place. And we have enough local intelligence, capital, and courage to build a different on-ramp ourselves.
Prosperity-Works is not a program. It’s infrastructure:
For workers, it’s a bridge from hustle to stability.
For employers, it’s a way to compete for talent and share costs without getting buried in HR complexity.
For lenders and communities, it’s a way to turn “hard-working but stuck” into “qualified and ready.”
In the next piece, I’m going to zoom in even tighter on Southwest Washington— and talk about what this model could actually mean for a 24-year-old in Longview, a 26-year-old in Ilwaco, or a 29-year-old teacher in Vancouver who wants to stop renting and start rooting. Because if we want young people in places like Pacific, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania, and Clark to build lives here—not just pass through on their way to somewhere “more affordable”— we’re going to have to stop blaming them for the math and start changing the structure that feeds it.
