I feel like this article/author wanted to connect a lot of things when the reality of the situation is far more simple.
People and young people have having less sex and less of everything because of poorer circumstances combined with an inability/reflectance to compromise.
Applied to housing this means that it is economically harder to afford a house so people stay home in their parents mcmansions. It's hard to afford/own a home because people don't want to buy a starter home so no one builds them. Finally it becomes very profitable if you have the cash to flip old houses thus quickly exhausting the supply of cheaper housing.
Speaking of living in places that could be called mcmansions, they are not bad to live in. While you could say a family as a unit is better off with a smaller 70s tri level, the mcmansions has more space so each individual feels like they get what they want. The main rooms remain clean and uncluttered while the messy lives of children are confined to bedrooms. The interior is vast enough to support guests and extended family, etc.
For movies, the consolidation of production means that having many movies is just competing with yourself. Producing a single film for 90% of the demographics is cheaper and makes more money. A decent percentage of America is quite religious and won't take there 3 12 year olds to anything containing sex. Thus most movies now don't contain it. Anything with sex becomes too taboo to view with the family which just reinforces this effect. The current wave of social justice also makes sex an untouchable topic both for movies and in real life.
An observation I've shared before: Some former hippie who was older than me once told me "All the TV stations went off the air at 9pm. There was nothing to do after that if you were still awake other than sex and drugs."
Now we have the internet. You can go down the rabbit hole on YouTube videos, intellectual articles or whatever floats your boat, sexually or otherwise, any time of the day or night if you have an internet connection and even homeless people can manage to get online at least part of the time via the library, a cell phone, etc.
Maybe sex was something of a time filler and it's no longer needed as desperately because we have plenty of other things to do. We also attach less to sex/marriage. At one time, whether or not you married had a huge impact on access to money, medical benefits, etc and that's changing.
Similarly: We have an "autism epidemic" in a world that has gotten a lot noisier and busier than it used to be. We know the world has changed radically and yet we keep looking for ways to blame the individual for behaving differently rather than wondering about how those widespread environmental changes are impacting people and what role they play in widespread trends from vastly huge upticks in certain diagnoses to vastly less sex.
No one builds starter homes because municipalities don't zone for them.
If you want a 3 bdrm condo most cities don't adequately zone for them, and so the limited stock is obscenely over-priced. The same follows for townhouses and row homes.
My own municipality is, allegedly, progressive and far-left; but even it has locked in a huge chunk of the town as single unit homes in a "heritage conservation area", and insists on building bachelor and 2 bdrm suites when it densifies.
So what's the point? You can rent your parents' basement suite for cheaper than the mortgage on what would be a lateral shift in housing status.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, because it's absolutely true.
Residents of this neighbourhood regularly campaign against affordable housing, halfway houses, addiction recovery centres, et al; with Poe's Law levels of quotations in the local rag, with such gems like "I support affordable housing, but those people don't belong in this neighbourhood."
Moreover, the area is _mostly_ post-war colonial-style architecture. Post-WW1/WW2, to be clear. It's not exactly dripping with important cultural landmarks and structures.
Now, the local native band? They're still fighting to recover the remains of their grandparents and great grandparents which were buried under the local high school, along with half of a Chinese cemetery. I kid you not, it's like something out of a cheesy 80's B-movie.
"Heritage" _usually_ means one thing: keeping out the undesired people. "Heritage" is a weasel word for classism and racism.
This is in fact one reason why areas get gentrified. You cannot build anything new in many pricier parts of town although the better, often more central location would make it economically very interesting. It's so often zoned as done historic area and thus new development moves to the cheaper areas. I'm not saying it's the only reason, but it certainly makes the problem much worse.
I always wonder if expectations are set correctly for “kids these days”. I bought my first house at about 26, halfsies with a friend, but we were above average income for our age being programmers back in the very early aughts. I don’t think my parents had their first home until they were in their thirties. There are certainly zoning issues in cities, there are legitimate issues with living wages, but the idea that you could step out of your parent’s house at less than 26 years of age and have the capital, credit history, etc., much less maturity, to own a house (and all that entails) seems like a mis-calibrated expectation. Kids need to allow for the idea that most people spend years amassing wealth in order to buy a home, and adults now were just as broke when they were young and starting out. It’s the difference between being level 1 and level 20. You don’t get the same cool stuff at lvl 1. If anything, I see far more economic opportunities (thank you, Internet) for young adults now than at any time in the past. There’s far more money in the United States than there is talent. Disposable income is crazy.
People and young people have having less sex and less of everything because of poorer circumstances combined with an inability/reflectance to compromise.
Applied to housing this means that it is economically harder to afford a house so people stay home in their parents mcmansions. It's hard to afford/own a home because people don't want to buy a starter home so no one builds them. Finally it becomes very profitable if you have the cash to flip old houses thus quickly exhausting the supply of cheaper housing.
Speaking of living in places that could be called mcmansions, they are not bad to live in. While you could say a family as a unit is better off with a smaller 70s tri level, the mcmansions has more space so each individual feels like they get what they want. The main rooms remain clean and uncluttered while the messy lives of children are confined to bedrooms. The interior is vast enough to support guests and extended family, etc.
For movies, the consolidation of production means that having many movies is just competing with yourself. Producing a single film for 90% of the demographics is cheaper and makes more money. A decent percentage of America is quite religious and won't take there 3 12 year olds to anything containing sex. Thus most movies now don't contain it. Anything with sex becomes too taboo to view with the family which just reinforces this effect. The current wave of social justice also makes sex an untouchable topic both for movies and in real life.