By Tim Henderson / Stateline.org/TNS
HOBOKEN, New Jersey—Cory Piirto is a newlywed living in New York City, but the prospect of starting a family is prompting her to plan a move across the Hudson River to Hoboken.
“Everything’s just easier here,” said Piirto, 27, as she lounged on the Hoboken waterfront, where Manhattan skyscrapers form a vivid backdrop. “It’s easier to live, easier to afford a two-bedroom. You can have a car and take [your children] places.”
Millennials like Piirto, the generation born after 1980 and the first to come of age in the new millennium, still love urban areas but are finding they want more space, affordability, cars and the parking spaces for them as they gain more wealth and get ready to settle down and have children.
Many millennials see close-in suburbs, like Hoboken, with its youthful vibe and picture-window views of Manhattan’s skyline, as a likely compromise. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Hoboken is $2,900 compared with $5,000 for nondoorman buildings in Chelsea, a neighborhood in Manhattan.
As the leading edge of the generation reaches its child-rearing age, choosing where to live is increasingly urgent. And it’s one many local governments are responding to in a desire to attract or retain the economic activity and tax dollars created by what’s now the largest generation in the US workforce.
Communities are making way for more dense and affordable development, with retail stores within walking distance and public transportation, for an age group that has shunned cars out of economic necessity or preference. It’s happening in the Virginia commuter suburbs west of Washington, District of Columbia, for example. And Hunterdon County, New Jersey, an hour’s drive from Hoboken, has devised a strategy to remake itself and stem its millennial exodus.
The payoff is great if communities can attract or retain millennials, as they tend to be highly educated and to bring about greater economic productivity, according to research published last year by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. “Policies that attract college graduates to live in a city have large spillovers on improving the local productivity of firms in the city and creating desirable amenities, which will further attract additional college graduates,” the report said, suggesting tax incentives for hiring high-skill workers and spending toward amenities valued by college graduates, such as low crime and good schools.
Among the nation’s counties with a high proportion of working-age millennials—ages 25 to 34—are Hudson County, where Hoboken is located, and Arlington County, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington, according to a Stateline analysis of 2014 Census estimates.
One in five residents in those counties—and in millennial magnets Boston, Denver, Manhattan, San Francisco and Washington—belong to the 25- to 34-year-old age group. Not far behind are growing favorites such as Austin, St. Louis, Nashville, Tenn., and Portland, Ore.
That a close-in suburb like Hoboken can be attractive to a large number of millennials does not come as a surprise to Neil Howe, the economist and demographer who coined the term millennial.
“We have always believed that millennials are not going to stay in these core urban areas when they get married and have kids. They won’t want to bring their kids up there,” said Howe, co-author of “Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation.” “But they want to be close. They want to be where the action is and they want to be with each other.”
And that can offer hope to flagging suburbs close to urban centers, Howe said. “I think you’re going to find that a big new area is going to be inner suburbs.”
According to a Rutgers University report released last year, Hoboken had a declining population for 60 years before its youthful boom started in 2000. The suburb has grown exponentially since then—partly because, as Howe said, millennials want to be with each other.
Piirto said her friend Julie Horowitz, whom she met in college in Colorado, introduced her to Hoboken and convinced her to make the move from Manhattan.
“I’m from North Jersey,” said Horowitz, a medical sales representative. “The way it worked out, all my friends went to college and came back and moved to Hoboken. So I have my whole crew here.”
Image credits: Tim Henders on/State line/TNS