WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — "My bus is running slightly behind," Olaleye Onikuyide texted ahead of our meeting at a coffee shop on West Hartford's main street. The 28-year-old Democrat running for Connecticut state representative still made it on time and said he loved riding public transit.
Onikuyide also lives with his parents, though he said that's by choice to save money, unlike the many young adults who can't afford to live on their own.
Still, as part of a generation that faces record-high housing unaffordability, he started obsessing years ago over how to make it cheaper. Now that the cripplingly high cost of both rent and homes has become an urgent national conversation, he likens it to being a fan of a niche music group before everyone else caught on.
"All of a sudden, it's blown up and everybody's at the concerts and you're like, 'OK, this is a bit of a crowd here now,'" he said with a broad smile.
Nationwide, housing costs are a top issue for voters in a midterms season laser focused on affordability. A chronic housing shortage has pushed up prices, and the fallout cuts across generations.
Younger people are renting with roommates into their 30s. They're struggling to save for a down payment and wondering whether it even makes sense to buy, given today's sky-high prices. Empty nesters looking to downsize can't find an affordable place to go, and longtime homeowners are reluctant to move at all, given current high mortgage rates.
Generation Z candidates from both major parties said their age group has a lot at stake and is uniquely positioned to help create solutions for everyone.
"We're in the thick of it," Onikuyide said, citing not only high housing and gas prices but also student loan debt and a tough labor market. "We might be the generation that is more educated and yet worse off than our parents."
His policy goals include creating more mixed-income housing and walkable cities. Adding density to urban areas can be controversial, as longtime residents worry about more traffic or strained infrastructure. But Onikuyide and others also see an opportunity for bipartisanship. And if elected, he would feel well-placed to make life less expensive for his constituents.
"I keep one eye on the national conversation about it," he said, "but the action is happening at the state level."
"The experience of being a renter"
About an hour away in New Haven, Conn., 26-year-old Eli Sabin found a quiet room for talking inside the ornate City Hall. He's also a Democrat running for state representative, and he has worked in this building.
When he was a sophomore in college, he started serving on the Board of Alders. That's "our old-fashioned term for the city council," he explained. "We changed some of the zoning rules to allow for denser development and more affordable units."
Elected officials at all levels in the U.S. are overwhelmingly homeowners. Sabin said it makes a difference that he is a renter, like about 70% of residents in this city.
"I think it's the experience of being a renter and just the insecurity and instability that you feel," he said. His lease is up in May, and he has no idea whether the rent will go up or whether the landlord will even allow him to stay.
He would like more protections against eviction and would also like to make it easier to buy a home.
Older people have told him how they bought 30 years ago on a teacher's salary but could never do that today, while younger people feel "pushed out of the community." Some have moved to states such as Texas, Tennessee or Florida, "not because that's where they have the best job opportunities or where they want to be, but because simply that's the place they can afford," he said.
Sabin won a three-way primary, beating both a democratic socialist and a longtime incumbent first elected more than a decade before he was born. "I think people feel like we need fight right now," he said. "We need energy, we need new ideas and we can't accept that the status quo is all right."
Like Onikuyide, he credited New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for igniting political energy around tackling the everyday cost of living. But Sabin also pointed to Republican-led states such as Texas and Montana as role models for bipartisan legislation on housing affordability.
A market gap in starter homes
In Kalispell, Mont., Republican Lukas Schubert is only 21 and campaigning for reelection as a state representative. "I'm not even recently the most youngest," he laughed. The state allows people to run for office at age 18.
On Schubert's campaign website, housing is at the top of the issues page, along with Christianity and taxes. "It is a top priority among Republicans as well," he said "It's not just, you know, a Democrat issue."
Home prices in Montana jumped sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people moved there. Gen Z and millennial lawmakers were part of a push to overhaul zoning and red tape. A 2023 package of laws dubbed the "Montana Miracle" aims to make it easier and cheaper to build housing.
Those changes are rolling out, but the housing challenge remains vast. Schubert would like to rein in large foreign corporations that buy up homes and noncitizens who own large parcels of land and property but don't live in the state. He also sees a big gap in the market.
"Seemingly all of the new development is apartment buildings or big, you know, 5, 10 million-dollar mansions," he said. His main focus is on starter homes, either single family or duplexes. "That's what we need to be really getting rid of government barriers to producing."
This past session, Schubert proposed a major tax break for developers that sell a newly built starter home for less than 85% of the local median value. It did not pass, but he plans to try again to boost homeownership.
"That has been one of the biggest factors in wealth retention and development for the middle class in this country," he said.
Like the Democratic candidates in Connecticut, Schubert wants to keep the American dream alive for new generations.
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