Young Mainers are saving money by living at home, but not everyone can

In the four years since Dee Wilbur moved back in with her parents in Bangor, she estimates she’s saved well over $40,000 by not renting.

With those funds in hand, Wilbur, 33, has been able to travel to 42 countries and put her savings toward an investment property that she hopes will allow her to retire early.

“It allows me to live life to the fullest, and I wouldn’t be able to do that also paying rent somewhere else,” Wilbur, who works remotely as a senior business consultant, said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people here in Maine are priced out of that freedom.”

Wilbur is no anomaly. Nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 29, and 16 percent of those aged 28 to 43, are living at home with their families, according to recent polls. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote work play a large role in that trend, but census data actually shows an 87 percent increase in Americans aged 25 to 34 living at home over the past two decades, indicating more is at play.

One of the biggest drivers is the skyrocketing home prices and rents of recent years, fueled by historic underproduction of housing. Prices have reached a fever pitch since the COVID-19 pandemic, and made opting to live at home for longer an increasingly attractive option, affording Gen Zers and millennials the time and savings they need to play in today’s tight market.

The decision is more than economic. Wilbur makes enough to rent in Bangor but enjoys spending more time with her parents as they grow older and their health begins to ail. For Jade Decker, 27, moving back into her parents’ Glenburn home last year was about saving but also about taking the time to step back and thoughtfully map out her next housing situation.

“I’ve been able to save about half my paycheck each month, but I’ve also used this time to pay down a lot of debt and student loans,” Decker, who works remotely in marketing, said. “It’s just set me up to be in a better position when I do move.”

Decker is planning to move to Boston on a budget of up to $2,000 a month. It’s an overwhelming, expensive process, she said, and often landlords demand the first and last month of rent to be paid in advance, alongside a broker’s fee and security deposit.

Financing that move would have been possible had Decker been paying rent in Bangor or Glenburn for the last year, she said, but she wouldn’t have been able to travel, save or pay down debt like she has. Both she and Wilbur said they have many friends in the Bangor area choosing to live with their parents for a variety of reasons, but all of them are glad to have the financial freedom it affords them.

But this increasingly popular safety net is not available to everyone, and the young Mainers who are navigating the housing market – particularly in southern Maine – are finding it difficult to get by.

For Jess Falero, a 26-year-old who works at a harm reduction nonprofit in Portland, there’s no choice but to go it alone. Falero grew up in foster care. Once they aged out of the system, high Portland rents and the cost of caring for their chronic health issues meant that Falero, with no family to turn to, ended up homeless.

“I’ve done it all,” Falero said. “I’ve slept outside. I’ve couch-surfed. Gone to shelters. A little bit of everything.”

Falero was able to receive a housing voucher as part of Maine’s Foster Yo uth to Independence program , administered by Portland’s housing authority. This allowed them to finance an apartment. But since Falero began to work part-time, earning $32 an hour, they said they’ve hit the so-called benefits cliff – known as the inflexible decrease or elimination of public benefits that can come as incomes increase. With some assistance now out of reach, Falero spends 80 to 90 percent of their income on housing.

“I don’t have any, like, safety net or backup,” Falero said. “It’s pretty daunting to not be able to have the capacity to have any kind of emergency funds of any sort. And I don’t have a home to return to if I needed it.”

Sleeping outside again is only one unexpected expense away. That terrifies Falero, and many other young people they know in Portland have similar fears. Nearly a third of Maine’s homeless population is under the age of 24, the Portland-based shelter Preble Street found in 2022 . As of this year, the minimum wage in Maine’s largest city is now $15 an hour , but that puts the fair market rent for a 1-bedroom apartment — about $1,500 — far out of reach.

Though Falero dreams of homeownership, like more than a third of Gen Zers surveyed by Freddie Mac in 2022, that seems totally out of reach without savings.

“The working class, you don’t get paid enough. Wages did not increase with the cost of living,” Falero said. “We’re not faring well. We are, like, barely figuring it out.”