Callous Millennials Killed 'Guest Rooms' By Being Poor

Also because you can't put a guest room on avocado toast.

For the last 20 years, at least, Millennials have run roughshod over the land, brutally murdering hundreds if not thousands of beloved American institutions. We killed diamonds! We killed Applebee's and Hooters ! We killed napkins! We killed mayonnaise! We killed pickpocketing! We killed cereal ... probably with all of our avocado toast.

Hell, we even killed  death  .

And now, it seems, we have killed guest rooms. Sorry about that!

According to Architectural Digest, millennials killed guest rooms because we are more likely to rent apartments in the city with roommates than to live in suburban homes with "family units."

The reasons for the guest room’s popularity are the same behind its demise. You know the facts:  Homeownership has been replaced by rental agreements, flatshares are more common than family units, and suburban homes have given way to (very) small city apartments.

Surely this is all a matter of preference and not a matter of "it is extremely expensive to own a home now and also cities are where all of the jobs are."

When we do have spare rooms, we (rudely) use them for things other than having a special room for guests to stay in when they visit.

But those who have that luxurious second room often find uses for it that are far from the traditional guest room, especially as a consequence of the pandemic lifestyle shift. “Even post-pandemic, we’re doing lots of things at home: Making art and playing music, exercising, working, cooking from scratch—and we need storage for all the gear that goes with that,” Sarah explains. “In my experience, that often means space for guests gets sacrificed.” We’ve not only brought the office home, but also the leisure: From glam rooms to sex rooms, private recreational spaces are also the new normal. It’s an idea that permeates not only small city dwellings, but also bigger ones.

This is all probably factually true. I don't know too many people who have actual guest rooms. Though I do feel it should be noted that many of us have also used rooms that are not guest rooms as guest rooms. I mean, if you didn't have a guy living on your couch for a while in the aughts, you were no one .

Was it because we elder millennials were trendy, ironic mustache sporting, PBR-drinking hipsters flouting traditional conventions or was it because there was a massive recession and many of us had to work in the service industry because there were pretty much no jobs available when we graduated? No one will ever know. It is a mystery!

Frankly, I think it is probably a good thing that guest rooms are going out of fashion. How many non-empty-nester type people are so excited about house guests that they'd just keep a room specifically for guests in their home that is never used unless someone comes to stay with them? I can honestly say that I would have far more use for a Stevie Nicks-style temperature controlled cape room than I would have for a guest room. Because couches and air mattresses and hotels exist.

By now, we all know that houses are significantly more expensive than they were in the 1900s, and that the cost of housing outpaced inflation by 150 percent. If housing had kept pace with inflation since 1970, the median house price today would be $177,778, not $428,700 , as it is now. That is literally more than twice the cost, and we're supposed to have guest rooms? Seriously?

You know what else hasn't kept up with inflation since the 1970s? Wages! Median income in 1971 was $10,290, which today would be $75,249. Today, it's actually $54,132. The minimum wage was $1.60, which would work out to $11.70 today, much higher than $7.25. Practically everything else was also less expensive then than it is now, even accounting for inflation. The average monthly rent was $108, which today would be $789. The actual national average today is $2,495. So we're getting paid less, spending more, have more debt because we need more education in order to get jobs that pay more than minimum wage and, again, people are out here wondering why we don't have guest rooms.

All of this being said — if you're sad about the demise of guest rooms, don't blame "millennials," blame capitalism, blame income inequality, blame the people out here selling houses (and "flipping" houses) for obscene amounts of money. Blame Republicans for making so much of suburban and rural America entirely unlivable. Or, you know, find some richer friends. I don't know what to tell you.

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