I'd consider living with non-family roommates to be in the "relative squalor" bucket if you're making $200k-300k a year.

I was making that much on Wall St back in the day and had roommates, because it was fun and we could share costs for a place we barely used since we were working.

As a married person with children now, having roommates is absolutely out of the question. I know people suggest it as a "solution" to the housing crisis but in no way is it acceptable in my mind to have strangers living in the house with my wife and children.

That's pretty harsh. I don't make that kind of money but if I did, I'd still be open to living with roommates in a house. Some of us like living with other people and saving money while at it.

That's a ridiculous statement to make. I live with a roommate and love it even though I could afford to live by myself. We have a really nice central apartment and get more social interaction.

People making different choices than you aren't "living in squalor." You're going to have a hard time convincing me that a luxury apartment with separate bedrooms is squalor.

Amen. After spending all day in an open office, it isn’t home unless I’m in control of the acoustic environment. Roommates ate my sanity very quickly during my internship - they were lovely people, but they had the right to watch TV and talk on the phone and they did. I ended up spending most of my evenings and weekends in random work conference rooms.

I'm so glad that both of my out of state internships gave me a free/small deduction 1BR apartment! Would not be able to deal with a roommate.

If you saw how I live here in small-town Kansas working remotely for a typical SFBA salary, you might reconsider. It's a fantastic life for me and my family. Maybe it's where I'm at in my career but I've never had a hard time moving jobs, either. I get recruiters reaching out regularly for other remote gigs.

If you're living in Kansas on a SFBA salary, you're living the dream. Kudos to you. Unfortunately, most new college graduates aren't going to get those kind of opportunities.

If someone really wants to emulate your lifestyle, they would be best served working in SFBA for the first 5-10 years of their career, so as to build out their resume. Once you're more established and have an impressive resume, it's so much easier to find lucrative remote gigs.

I paid about $1000/month to rent a house with 3 other roommates in college when you added up all the utilities and bills such, it's surprising to me that you can get a nice place in SV for that!

...oh wait, you mean $1000/month PER PERSON? Ha, no. In Kansas, you can pay $1000/month to own that whole house.

And then you have to find someone willing to rent a $4K/mo property to four college kids...

>I can't speak towards family living, but as a single person willing to live with roommates, you can find pretty nice places in the heart of Silicon Valley for ~$1000/month

That would fall squarely in the 'living in relative squalor' category. making 200-300K and living with roomates in a small place? Pretty atypical for most of the world, and completely discounts most people over ~25 years old.

Sharing home with strangers is just a no-no for me. In other places, only extreme poverty (ex. as in early USSR) forces people to do it.