Student debt keeps young people out of NYC

With a mountain of student loans, finding a lease can be a daunting task

Student debt protesters in NYC
Student debt protesters in NYC

WEEKENDEDITION There are many barriers that a young person must hurdle over when attempting to move to New York City, but soaring student debt is making it even harder for young talent to set up shop in the metropolis.

In the last 10 years, education debt has tripled, reaching over $1 trillion. And the New York Fed has found that for the first time in a decade, a 30-year-old with student debt is less likely to take out a home mortgage than another young person who didn’t borrow for school, according to the New York Times.

For a young person just setting up in NYC, finding a landlord willing to overlook tens of thousands in debt can be difficult. Often transplants are forced to share bedrooms and sleep on couches for extended periods.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

“I take my responsibility for my part and not being on top of it,” Tierney Cooke, who moved to NYC in 2010, said. “At 18 or 19, agreeing to take on thousands and thousands of dollars of debt, I had no idea what it meant.”

The situation has economists worried. Last month, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that student loan debt was killing the housing recovery, and the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has called student debt “an educational crisis” that is “affecting our potential future growth.” [NYT] Christopher Cameron