my adult kids live with me.. one of them makes $50k and the other 40K and neither of them could afford and apartment in our area.
Average apartment rent in my area is more than $2k a month.
the powers that be just built some new luxury apartments called The Pearl.. for example this is the rent for a 1b.
1 bedroom
$2,414
1ba, 815 sq ft,
I've seen them advertising 2 months free rent to get you to move in..
https://thepearlfs.com/
The official government number is you need to be making 105k a year to afford to purchase an average home right now.
If you want a home for 250k in my area it comes with: no lights, paint, trim, moulding, crap hardwoord, crap carpet, plastic, no stainless steel, etc. In otherwords I would have to spend another 50-100k renovating to get it into a standard of building that was offered on 150k homes just 5 years ago. I kid you not, the open space (living room, dining room, kitchen) has ONE BULB.
EDIT: One time I did the math on how much it would cost to build one if I GC'd the home myself (which I did in 08, and work for a large engineering firm so I could get our local Hispanic guys to come do some overtime). I could build those homes for under 100k.
When I moved to my current town, I rented an apartment (this was 2007) 3 beds, balcony, and garage, for 1250/mo in a premium establishment. It was half empty, it was "too expensive". Now they want the same for 1 bed, no amenities, no garage. I bet you they are half empty. As a matter of fact I will drive by take a look.