You won't hear me say that the housing market doesn't need an overhaul, but I'm not sure that the "a factory job could buy you a home out of high school" meme is entirely accurate. If you look at home ownership rates, the rates today are higher than (though not by much) the rates in the 1960s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
I can't find numbers from earlier than 1980, but 18-44 _is_ lower, though again the rate in 1980 was just a few percentage points higher, and not nearly high enough to imply that home ownership out of high school was in reach for the majority:
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
I can't find numbers from earlier than 1980, but 18-44 _is_ lower, though again the rate in 1980 was just a few percentage points higher, and not nearly high enough to imply that home ownership out of high school was in reach for the majority: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf