Story and photos by Shelby Lisk
It’s hard to get a warm shower when you live with six other adults, says Travin Butler. Seven adults and three dogs live under his parent’s roof in Belleville, Ont. On any given day, the house could be packed with Butlers two brothers, his parents, his girlfriend, Brittany McBeath, and occasionally his brother’s girlfriend stays as well.
It’s a crowded house but to the couple it’s worth sacrificing some of their space so that they can save money to buy their first home together. While Butler works full time for the City of Belleville’s public works department, McBeath is finishing her master’s degree in health sciences at Queen’s University. Butler, 23, has been living with his parents his whole life. McBeath, 23, moved in to the home a year ago upon his parent’s suggestion.
“They just wanted to see us save as much as we can while we’re here,” says Butler. Butler recalls that when his parents were younger, they went out on their own and they couldn’t afford it, realizing that it’s very hard to save any money while paying rent.
Butler and McBeath aren’t alone in their struggles. According to Statistics Canada, more than two in five young adults in Ontario were living with their parents in 2016, a number that has risen by 20% since 2001 making Ontario the province with the highest percentage of adult children deciding to live at home.
McBeath and Butler are looking to buy a house this spring but neither of them would be able to afford it without the income of the other. McBeath says that a bank will not even consider her for a mortgage on her own while she’s still in school.
RBC’s housing trends and affordability report from September 2018 says, “The ownership costs to carry a home bought in the second quarter of 2018 would have taken up 53.9% of a typical household’s income.”
The 2016 census shows that the median household income was $74,287 in Ontario in 2015. However, the medium income for 15 to 24-year-olds was $10,574 and for 25 to 34-year-old age group fell 2% to $34, 776.
Even in a smaller municipality like Belleville, young people looking to buy homes are trying to be creative. The couple are looking to purchase outside of the city limits where they can get more for their budget than in town. “I just don’t think that moving out before your mid-twenties is possible anymore,” says Butler matter-of-factly, “I know a lot of people do it but we saved a lot, a lot more than most people out of our friends. Maybe we overthink it but it’s a lot and people want to have jobs that you can sustain. You don’t want to be house poor and houses are insanely expensive now. Ones that we looked at for our price range, like $250,000, they’re not even finished. You’d need to put a lot of money and work into them still,” says Butler.
“The high proportion of young adults living with their parents in Ontario is most likely the result of a combination of economic realities, including the high cost of housing, and cultural norms that favour young adults living with their parents for longer,” says Statistics Canada 2016 census report.
Analyses from the 2006 Canadian Census and the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) suggest that immigrants, especially those who arrived as children, and those who are second‑generation Canadians (born in Canada but with at least one parent born outside of Canada) were more likely to live with a parent than were Canadians of the third or more generations
Anna Paluch and her husband Floro Bely live in the downstairs apartment of a duplex, while Paluch’s parents live in the upstairs. Paluch grew up in the upstairs apartment and moved downstairs on the day of her wedding: October 7, 2017.
Anna Paluch opens the window to talk to her parents, Jerzy and Krystyna Paluch, who knocked at her window as they head out to run errands. “It can be frustrating because there are moments when we are home doing our own thing and in the early days they wouldn’t even knock, they would just open the door and come in... But then there are perks like when we don’t have time to do groceries... we will be at home and all the sudden there’s groceries at our door,” says Paluch.
Anna Paluch recreated photos of her mother for a school project. They now sit on a shelf at her parents. Her parents are both immigrants from Poland but Paluch was born in Canada.
Anna Paluch, 26, and her husband, Floro Bely, 28, sit in their home looking out the windows. Their windows face the St. Hyacinth Catholic church across the street and the parking lot for the church, respectively. Paluch’s family helps to care for the church and their home is owned by the priest. St. Hyacinth Parish was established for Polish immigrants and their families, who settled in Ottawa and the surrounding area. In such a small community, they most often keep their curtains drawn so that nosey people aren’t looking in to check what they are doing.
Butler got a part-time job working for the city straight out of high school at 18-years-old. He followed in his father’s footsteps, who has been working for the city for 30 years, because he wanted a secure job with benefits, good pay and a pension.
"Our generation’s jobs and careers are going to look completely different from our parents who started a job in their 20’s and were there for 30 years," says McBeath.
Not all millennials are following the path of their parents. “Jobs are so few and far between that you want to stack your resume or maybe you started in a field that you didn’t really like and you switched paths. Our generation’s jobs and careers are going to look completely different from our parents who started a job in their 20’s and were there for 30 years. That’s going to be really rare for our generation because there are not a lot of jobs that are pension-type position where you can work for 30 years. It’s going to be all part-time or contract jobs and we’re just going to hop contract to contract or maybe we just get bored easily,” says McBeath.
LinkedIn conducted a study on just this topic in 2017. Using information from their 500,000 users, their study found that millennials will change jobs an average of four times in their first decade out of college, compared to about two job changes by Gen Xers in their first 10 years out of college. While this is a jump, it’s not as exaggerated as many people like to joke about while poking fun at the flakiness of the generation. Millennials are at a point in their lives where they are changing careers but only time will tell how the steadiness in their work lives will play out in the next phase of their lives.
Jaclyn Williams, 26, recently left her full-time job at the Ottawa General Hospital as a medical lab technician in microbiology to go back to school to upgrade her credentials. While going to school at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, she commutes the 45-minute drive from her family’s home in Read, Ont.
She made the financial decision to stay with family, in her childhood home, so she could continue to contribute money to rent at her apartment in Ottawa where her partner, Gordie Rayner, continues to live. On weekends, she drives back to Ottawa to pick up shifts at the hospital.
In her childhood bedroom, atop a stack of textbooks, a crinkly pink sticky note is adhered to a lab chart that reads “My Jaclyn, we miss you so much already but are very proud of you. Have a great first day at school.” The note is signed from Gordie and Harley, the couple’s kitten.
The long-distance relationship might be a cornerstone of this generation, with the ability to stay in touch with loved ones far away unlike any generation before them but that doesn’t make it easy.
“Being away from Gordie is really difficult because I left my life there and gave up my job to further advance my career. I didn’t have to but I wanted to. I felt I was young enough to complete this program and still be rather young enough to enjoy my life being an MLT (medical lab technologist) when I’m done,” says Williams.
For many young adults, the financial burden of moving from college into the employment world can hit them over the head while they’re still trying to pay off debt from their studies.
Tom Wilson says that he enjoys living with in his mom’s house again. There is an extra adult around to help out with his family while he works or his partner is at school. “My family bought this house when I was about 15 or 16 years old. We were living in an apartments or duplexes in Trenton while we went to school so this is the first family home we bought. There’s a lot of history and family-ness to this house that makes it feel like a home so that’s why living here it isn’t weird or anything like that because this is the house that the mom, my little brother and I, we all grew up in or at least for our teenage years,” says Wilson.
Desiree DeCoste plays with their son on the floor while Tom Wilson looks on at the two of them laughing. Wilson is happy to live in his mothers house and feels that it is a beneficial situation for everyone. “To be here to help her and for her to help me with saving an absolute ton of money because two bedroom apartments now are $1300 and they want like heat and hydro so you’re looking at anywhere from $1500 - $1700 a month just for that and then two cars, two gas… you know I’m looking at $3000, $4000 a month operating cost. This cuts that down to like $500 to $1000. That helps drastically to not have to pay all of those extra costs,” says Wilson.
Tom Wilson, 39, and his partner Desiree DeCoste, 26, feed their son Matthias Wilson while playing peek-a-boo. DeCoste moved in to the family home about two years ago and their son was born November 29, 2017.
Krystina Brown, 26, moved back to her parents’ house in Belleville, Ont. to do her placement after completing the Recreation and Leisure program at Fleming College but didn’t realize at the time that she would stay for five years to pay off student loans and car payments.
Brown has type 1 diabetes so not having health benefits when she finished college was an additional financial burden. “When I was in college I was under my Dad’s plan. When I finished college, I was like... ‘I have no benefits’. Then I started working at the end of April and I don’t think I had benefits until like September or October. Those few months, my parents paid for my stuff and they wouldn’t tell me how much they were paying. I’m guessing it was around $500-600 a month,” says Brown.
Even amongst the shame, guilt and mockery that might come from friends when moving back home as an adult, Siobhan Locke, 26, says that it is a privilege to have a loving family to support you.
“I moved back in after grad school for financial reasons because grad school was expensive. So, I’ve been working for the past year and just trying to save up. I would hope that people would have a different perspective of adults living with their parents. Maybe celebrate that someone has caring people in their life instead of criticizing,” says Locke.
Locke moved back into her parents’ home in Ottawa, Ont. after completing her master’s degree in art history at Queen’s University. While she searches for a position in a field that can be tedious to find work in, she still believes that doing something you love outweighs money.
“Having family members who are medical professionals, the contrast is really stark sometimes. It’s like ‘oh, I’m not saving anyone’s life’ or maybe I am. I feel like there are family friends who make comments about that. I would be depressed if I became an accountant or something even if I had more job security, it wouldn’t be worth it. I think the job market is hard for everyone so to just assume that because you’re in the arts you’re dumb or foolish. I also don’t think one goes into the arts to become a millionaire. You do it because you love it,” says Locke.